


Should the Sky Fall

by astro_noms



Series: Full of Stars [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Big Bang Challenge, F/M, M/M, Multi, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-24
Updated: 2010-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:39:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 58,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astro_noms/pseuds/astro_noms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex Porter, captain of the LS <em>Nemesis</em> is the person you go to when you need things retrieved, found, or delivered in a discreet and not necessarily legal way. She's also dying. The drug addiction inflicted on her by a former lover is finally taking its toll, and Alex wants to tie up the loose ends in her life, just in case the last ditch attempt at recovery. Taking on one last job seems like a good way to leave her crew with a big payoff and go out on a high note. Especially if the job is something as easy as attempting to find the long lost ship Pathos Verdes. On a job where half the cash is up front, they can take the money and run (hello, pirates) or see it through for a payday beyond imagination. Either way, it sounds like an easy job, right?</p><p>When the job turns out to be more complicated than it, and things go from bad to worse to "oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die," everyone will have to work together to get out alive. Along the way, they'll also have to deal with their feelings, evil experiments, bad memories, misguided jealousy, and giant sparkly space squids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should the Sky Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/originalbigbang/profile)[**originalbigbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/originalbigbang/) 2010\. See the [master post](http://community.livejournal.com/originalbigbang/14971.html) in the comm for author's notes and links to bonus material.

"Just so we're clear," Alex glared at Titus and Oliver, who were staring at her with dazed expressions. "This never happened, and we shall never speak of it again. Am I clear?"

"Yes, captain," Titus nodded, and Oliver did the same.

"When we get back to the _Nemesis_ , I want you both to report to Dirk for a full exam," Alex added as she got them under way. The shuttle shuddered as she pushed it perhaps a bit too hard on take-off. Alex knew her ship, and the shuttle as an extension of it, inside and out, and she knew what they were capable of, so despite Oliver clutching at the edge of his seat, she didn't let up and kept going at full speed.

Once the atmosphere of the moon was behind them, the shuttle settled, and Alex glanced over her shoulder to see Oliver slowly relaxing, color returning to his face. He turned to speak to Titus, and Alex could see the mouth-shaped bruise on his collarbone, just above where the collar of his shirt was still shimmering with a dusting of pollen. Her lips tingled, and she forced herself to turn back to the console and focus. She was the captain, dammit, and she had rules. Very specific rules. It just wasn't a good idea for a ship's captain to get too close to her crew, and what she and Titus and Oliver had spent the last two days doing was a lot more than just "getting close."

Sighing, Alex set the course for the rendezvous with the _Nemesis_ , put the shuttle's autopilot on, and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes.

Once they were back aboard the _Nemesis_ , Alex left the shuttle and Titus and Oliver behind, heading straight for her cabin. All she wanted to do was take a nice long shower, get back to her duties, and forget about the whole thing. She got as far as making the plans, only to have them derailed by the loud screech the shower let out when she attempted to turn on the water. Biting back a groan, she slapped the comm button on the wall.

"Could someone please tell me what the hell is going on with the showers?"

"I'd love to, captain," Teri answered, sounding far too cheerful, "but we have no idea. Ash has been crawling all through the system for a couple of hours, but he hasn't found anything yet. Sonic shower's working, though."

"I don't want a goddamn sonic shower," Alex grumbled, turning off the comm. There was nothing wrong with sonic showers, but she had gone to the trouble and expense of having real showers installed on her ship specifically to avoid having to make do with them. They were efficient, and they got you clean, but there was just something far more pleasant about the feel of hot water on skin. Still, a sonic shower was better than no shower at all.

As she stood in the cramped sonic cubicle—yet another reason she'd had proper showers put in, with spacious stalls and enough room for two or more, not that she'd ever had a chance to test out that claim—she glanced down at the faint bruises on her hips, heat flooding her body as she remembered how the bruises had been made. Biting her lip, she swiped her hand over the shower controls, turning the sonic vibrations up until they beat against her skin hard enough to almost hurt.

When she was done, the bruised feeling no longer confined to ten spots on her hips, she wrapped herself up in a towel and headed back to her cabin. Work could wait; all she wanted to do now was lock her door and not come out until her thoughts were free and clear of the subject of the past two days, her security officer, and her navigator. It helped a little to think of them in terms of their positions, rather than the two men with whom she'd just spent the better part of two days sharing a bed. Nakedly.

And there she went again, thinking about things she was trying not to think about. If she couldn't get this under control, it would definitely be a problem. The _Nemesis_ wasn't a small ship, but there really wasn't any way for the captain to avoid two key crewmembers on any kind of long-term basis. Fortunately, there was something she could do to make things a little easier, at least for a while.

Letting the towel fall to the floor, Alex grabbed her clothes off the bed and pulled them on, sighing at the familiar way they felt against her skin. Once she was dressed, she made sure her cabin door was locked securely, and crossed to the small panel underneath the viewport. She fit her fingers into the faint indentations on the panel and pushed, making the panel slide open. The small lacquer box inside the secret compartment looked innocent enough, but what it held had already damn near killed her, in addition to costing her the career she'd worked so hard on building. Even now, seven years later, all she had to her name were a dubious reputation as a smuggler, the ruins of a once promising military career, and an addiction that would forever haunt her.

Alex took out the box and walked back to her bed, setting the box down beside her. She liked to tell herself that she didn't seek out its contents all that often, but if she really thought about it, she knew that wasn't true. As much as she loved her life now, being the captain of her own ship and having the freedom to do anything she wanted, there were still times when the only thing that kept the memories of her previous life from overwhelming her were the contents of the box in the secret compartment.

As she lifted the lid of the box, her hand shook. Alex held her hand up in front of her face, flexing her fingers in and out of a fist, then held her hand steady, silently willing it to remain steady. It shook, more than it had in a long time, and Alex sighed. It was inevitable, she supposed. It had been quite a while since her last dose, and the withdrawal symptoms were starting to kick in.

Gritting her teeth, she opened the box and took out the injector and one of the twelve remaining vials. Her supply was running low; it would get her through three months at the most, and then she would have to get more from her supplier, which wasn't something she was looking forward to. The man was all too fond of making her jump through hoops in order to get what she needed.

The red liquid in the vial gleamed when she held it up to the light. Her hand shook again, her fingers almost losing their grip on the vial. Alex sighed, snapped the vial into the injector, and pressed the needle tip against her neck. It wasn't technically a needle, but it still felt like one, every time she used the injector. Taking a deep breath, she hit the injection button and let her breath out in a rush as she felt the drug start to work its way through her.

The injector slipped out of Alex's fingers as she fell back on the bed. She stared up at the ceiling, the small lights mounted around the room slowly bleeding into bright colors, spreading out over the grey metal tiles like an oil slick on water. With what seemed like an enormous effort, Alex lifted her hand and swiped it over the sensor on her bedside table, dimming the lights until they shrank to pinpoints.

Alex stretched out on the bed, a small part of her mind reminding her that the fabric of the blanket she lay on couldn't be anywhere near as soft and slick as it felt when she ran her hands over it. She knew what she was feeling was just a product of drug-induced sensory overload, but it was so strong it may as well have been real. She closed her eyes and let herself feel the minute vibrations of the ship reverberating up through the bed and into her bones.

#

Alex had been crawling through the maintenance tunnels on the lower deck for three hours, the top of her coveralls rolled down to her waist, leaving her only in a thin tank top. She'd been lying in bed, enjoying a mild drugged out haze, when she'd heard something strange in the sounds of the ship. Deep down, she knew she was being ridiculous, that there was no way she could possibly know what was wrong with the ship just from what she'd heard, but whatever had given her the idea of what needed to be fixed had been correct, because she was now twenty minutes from being able to take a hot shower. After almost a week of only sonic showers, she wasn't about to question her good fortune.

She crawled out of the vent and straight into the shins of someone standing above her in the corridor. When she looked up, she saw Titus Casey looking down at her, his facial expression wavering between determination and uncertainty.

Alex glared up at Titus and he backed away, making room for her to stand up.

"What do you want, Titus?" Alex wiped her hands on her tank top, leaving greasy streaks on the no longer white fabric. "I'm busy." She was very pointedly _not_ looking at the almost-faded bruise on Titus' neck. Definitely not.

"I know, it's just..." He trailed off, looking around as if searching for support. "I know you said you didn't want to talk about—"

"Seriously, Titus, if the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with what you just acknowledged I don't want to talk about," Alex glared at him, "I will be very disappointed."

"I'm sorry, Alex," Titus shook his head. "I know what you said, but this is important. I want you to know, I'm not in the habit of taking advantage of people, no matter what the situation."

"Titus, are you apologizing for the three of us getting drugged and doing things we normally wouldn't do?" Alex laughed.

"Yes?" Titus looked confused.

"Thank you for the apology," Alex said, composing herself. "It wasn't really necessary, but thank you." She picked up her toolbox and started off down the hall, then turned back to Titus. "Are you and Oliver all right? I realize you two are involved, and this... this may have complicated things."

"Yeah," Titus nodded. "We've talked."

"Good. I'm not in the habit of sleeping with my crew, especially when they're involved with other people, so I wouldn't want to be responsible for any trouble between you two. Now, this is the last time I want to hear about this, is that clear?"

"Crystal," Titus nodded again. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Alex waved him off and started down the hall again. The shower system _should_ be working now, and there was no time like the present to test whether her repairs had been successful. She dropped the tools off in a maintenance compartment and headed straight for the shower, stripping off her clothes and underthings, dropping them to the floor before stepping into the shower stall. She turned on the faucet and sighed in relief at the spray of hot water raining down on her.

She stayed under the shower long enough that her fingertips started getting pruney, and she could feel her body had relaxed. Leaning her forehead against the wall, she turned off the water and stood where she was for a minute, breathing in the steam. When enough of the heat from the shower dissipated to make her start getting cold, she reached for the towel and dried herself off. Her coveralls were filthy from all the crawling she'd done in the maintenance duct, and she didn't want to put it on now that she was freshly clean, so she wrapped herself in her towel and carried the dirty clothes in her hand.

Once she was back in her cabin, she dropped the dirty clothes and the wet towel on the floor. She rummaged through her closet for a clean uniform, but instead of the familiar blue-black fabric, she came up with a jacket, its matte gunmetal grey fabric crumpled so badly that no amount of pressing it would get the wrinkles out. Alex's fingers clenched as she pulled the jacket out of the closet, sinking to her knees in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, clutching the garment to her chest.

#

_She's lost track of how much time has passed since she was brought here, or since the last time Tommy stepped into her tiny cell. Each time is like the last; he comes in, and despite her determination, her hope flares up again. Perhaps this time will be different, perhaps this time, he will turn out to have been on her side all along, perhaps this time, he'll lead her out of the cell and toward freedom. Each time is like the last; he comes in, leads her out of the cell, and her hopes are crushed when she sees the red vial in his hand._

_She doesn't remember much of what has been done to her, but she remembers the pain, terrifying, agonizing, and just as horrible as the last time, as the drug leaves her system. She screams, lying on the cold floor of her cell, her voice echoing off the walls. She screams and cries and begs for someone, anyone, to help her. Tommy hasn't asked anything of her, hasn't given her any explanation for what he's doing to her. Each time, when it feels like her blood is on fire and she's ready to claw her skin open with her nails, he comes in, leads her out of the cell, and the cycle starts all over again._

_This time, though, something's different. She can't really tell what, not with the haze of pain and the burning need clouding her senses, but there are noises outside the cell. She pulls herself together as much as she can; it doesn't amount to much, nothing more than getting up onto her hands and knees. The noises are getting louder, and she cries out, pressing her hands over her ears. There is a part of her that knows she should do something, prepare herself for whatever comes through the door, but just staying on her knees instead of curling up in the corner furthest from the door is taking all of what little energy she has left._

_There is one final shout outside, muffled by the thick door, and then silence falls. She drops her hands from her ears and stays as she is, sitting back on her heels, her arms loosely at her sides. When the door opens, her fingers briefly twitch, an attempt to clench her hands into fists, and then she sees who's standing in the doorway, and she's crying, great big body wrenching sobs that shake her whole body as she collapses to the floor._

_Henry is across the room and kneeling beside her in a flash, reaching out for her and pulling his hands back a second later. Still crying, Alex reaches out with a shaking hand and touches his knee for a fleeting moment before snatching her hand back._

_"Are you real?" Her voice is shaky and rough, her throat burning. "Are you really here?"_

_"Yeah, Alex," Henry nods, reaching out and taking her hand, squeezing her fingers. "I'm really here."_

_She rises to her knees and looks up at him through her tears._

_"I was afraid you wouldn't come," she laces their fingers together, pulling herself up and closer to him. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."_

_"I'm here now," he says, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over her shoulders. He glances over his shoulder. "Can you walk?" When she shakes her head, he pulls her closer and pulls her into his arms, standing up and carrying her out of the cell._

_Alex whimpers, turning her head to rest her forehead on Henry's shoulder. The pain of withdrawal was overshadowed for a while, but it's clawing its way back to the forefront of her awareness, and the touch of her clothes and Henry's hands against her body feels like it's scraping her skin raw._

_"Hang on," Henry whispers in her ear. "Just hang on a little longer. We're almost out of here."_

_Alex raises her head to reply, and the words stick in her throat. Tommy has clawed his way up off the floor and he's standing right behind Henry, swaying on his feet, the rifle in his hands, held like a club, raised up above his head. Alex feels her fingers spasm on Henry's shoulder and she draws breath to speak again, and then Henry is dropping to his knees, years of training and instinct kicking in, keeping his body curled around hers as they fall. Then they're both on the floor, and Tommy's standing over them, turning the rifle business-end towards them. He pulls his leg back and delivers a vicious kick to Henry's ribs. Alex cries out when she sees Henry's eyes roll back, a thin trickle of blood rolling across his forehead. Hands shaking, she reaches for his head, feeling the back of his head where Tommy's rifle made contact. Her hand comes away bloody, and she turns to look up at Tommy._

_"Sorry, sweetheart," he says, the smile twisting his lips into a grimace. "This just isn't your day."_

_Someone is screaming, and it takes Alex a moment to realize that someone is her. She's on her feet and moving before she really knows what she's doing, and then she's launching herself forward, tackling Tommy to the floor, sending the rifle skittering across the room. She keeps screaming even as Tommy overpowers her and flips them over so he's straddling her. He pins her arms under his knees, his weight on Alex's chest threatening to choke her. Tommy leers down at her, licking his lips, and he reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out an injector. It's already loaded with a vial, the red liquid gleaming in the light. The fight goes out of Alex, and she's simultaneously afraid of the drug and desperate for it._

_"You want some of this?" Tommy asks, and Alex tries not to nod, tries to stop the shaky whimper from escaping her lips, but she can't help it. If it weren't for Tommy's knees pinning her arms down, she'd be reaching for the injector, trying to get at it even as she hated herself for being weak._

_"Don't worry," Tommy grins at her. "You'll get—" The words die in his throat, ending in a gurgle. He slumps and the injector falls from his fingers. Alex stares up at the blood welling from the knife wound in his throat, spilling down his front and staining the jacket Henry put on her, and that's what makes her shove up at Tommy, trying to get him off her._

_The body topples off to the side, landing beside Alex, and she ends up staring into Tommy's dead eyes when she turns her head to the side. Whimpering, she sits up and crawls away from him, ignoring the sickening lurch in her stomach when she slips on the blood pooling around the body. Her fingers brush the injector and she freezes, staring at it. The vial is cracked, but not broken, and the liquid inside has barely begun to seep out. It wouldn't take much of an effort to pick up the injector and press it to her arm, to let the drug wash away everything that's happened in the last little while._

_Alex's fingers twitch with the desire for the momentary bliss of the drug, and the need is too great to resist. She reaches to the injector, moving it carefully so as not to break the vial. She can almost feel the rush of the drug hitting her blood as she lifts the injector to her arm, and then Henry's wrapping his hand around hers, prying her fingers open, and taking the injector from her._

_"No!" She cries, reaching out for it. "Henry, please!" The words come out in a rough whisper, her voice gone hoarse. "Please."_

_"I'm gonna get you out of here," he tells her, wiping the blood off his forehead. He pulls her up and sweeps her into his arms again._

#

Alex was sitting down at the table in the mess hall, poking her food dubiously.

"What is it?" she asked Ash, and he grinned.

"It's a new recipe," he said. "Try it, it's good."

Alex looked around the table, to Titus and Oliver, who were both eating the strange food and appeared to be enjoying it. She shrugged and picked up a forkful, and had almost raised it to her mouth when Dirk's voice rang out over the comms.

"Captain, I need to see you in medical."

"I just sat down to eat," Alex activated her comms. "What is it?"

"I don't think this is something you want going out on open comms, Alex," Dirk said, his tone apologetic.

Alex put down her fork and sighed. "If I come back here and someone's eaten my food, you'll all be eating rations for a week," she told the room, then tapped her wrist computer. "I'll be down in a couple of minutes, Dirk."

When Alex came into medical, Dirk shot to his feet, fast enough to make his chair wobble behind him. "Captain," he said, swallowing nervously and steadying the chair. "Thank you for coming."

"Yeah, yeah," Alex waved his words away. "What is it?"

"I was going through the results of the scans I did on you and Oliver and Titus, after you guys came back from Vaellel Three, and I found something."

"What exactly did you find?" Alex realized that her voice was doing that calm and even thing that it usually did when she was either thirty seconds from kicking someone's ass, or high and trying to hide it. She winced, and took a deep breath to try and calm down.

"Oliver and Titus tested fine," Dirk said. "Your tests, on the other hand... I might need to run some more tests, just to make sure..."

"For crying out loud, Dirk, out with it," Alex glared at him.

"You're dying," he said simply.

Alex sat down on one of the medical beds. "What?"

"I've never run this detailed a scan on you, otherwise I'd probably have picked it up a long time ago. There's old damage, I'm assuming from your initial exposure to Nanoximal, and it never really went away. And it's getting worse. Every time you use, it gets worse."

"What about the nanites? Shouldn't they be helping?"

"They're badly damaged from the Nanox and you haven't had them replaced since you left the military," Dirk shook his head. "They're wearing out, and they can't handle damage this major."

"And if I had them replaced? Would that help?" Alex gripped the edge of the bed tightly enough to turn her knuckles white. Dirk sat down beside her and patted her hand awkwardly, which was enough to make her loosen her grip.

"I don't know," he said.

"Yeah," Alex said. "And it's not like I can walk into a clinic and get treatment anyway. My IDs are good and everything, but one blood test and they'd know I'm not who I say I am." She stared ahead for a moment, then closed her eyes. "How long do I have?"

"It's hard to say," Dirk said.

"Try."

"If you don't do anything and keep going like you have been, probably no more than six months. But I think the damage could be... well, not reversed, but at least slowed down, if not stopped entirely. There are treatments I've read about, experimental ones, which have shown promise in similar cases. I can get in touch with a few people, and see what they say, see if a new dose of nanites would help. In the meantime, you have to stop using. I can try and find something for you that'll take the edge off the worst symptoms, but—"

"No," Alex shook her head, her lips pressed together in a thin line. "If I'm going to get clean, I'm going to get completely clean."

"Alex, you can't go cold turkey, your system won't be able to take the stress."

"So, what, in order to quit using Nanox, I have to keep using something else?"

"I'll try and find something that's not as addictive, but you're going to have to wean yourself off Nanoximal, and this is the only safe way."

Alex stared at the wall on the far end of the room for a while. "Do it," she said, getting to her feet. "Let me know when you've got what you need." She walked to the door and turned back to him. "And Dirk? I don't have to tell you that this stays between us, right?"

"No, ma'am," Dirk shook his head.

"Good. I may be the one dying, but if you tell anyone, you'll wish you were the terminal one."

#

Alex floated above Teri, enjoying the zero-g of the hydroponics bay, watching Teri as she worked, looking over the flowerbeds. As Teri took out the first of the seedlings, Alex kicked off the support beam near her and floated down, joining Teri above the freshly prepared flower beds.

"What are you planting?"

"I've got some cuttings that I've been trying to get to grow," Teri said. "They're notoriously hard to grow anywhere but their native planet." She reached for the individual plant containers and opened the first one, gently removing the plant inside.

Alex grabbed the edge of the flowerbed to stop herself from floating away as she gaped at the plant.

"What the fuck, Teri, vanas plants? What are you doing with that?"

"What?" Teri looked from the plant in her hands to Alex. "What do you mean?"

"That's the same fucking plant that—" Alex caught herself and shook her head. "They're _dangerous_."

"Only if you don't know what you're doing," Teri laughed. "This one is a long time from flowering, so we don't have to worry about the pollen." She paused, thinking about what Alex had just said. "How do you know about them, anyway? I didn't think you were interested in botany."

"Let's just say that I'm familiar with what the pollen can do to people," Alex frowned.

"Oh my god," Teri gaped at her. "That last delivery you made, to Vaellel Three. That's one of the places they grow. This is _awesome_ ," Teri grinned at Alex.

"Not another word, Teri," Alex glared at her. "Not another fucking word."

"Is that why you've been so jumpy lately? Oh my god, you're pregnant! That's what Dirk wanted to talk to you about!"

"No, I'm not pregnant," Alex rolled her eyes. "You need to stop letting your imagination run away with you."

"At this rate, it won't be long before you've taken everyone on the ship to bed," Teri smirked at Alex. "I suppose that's one way of ensuring your crew's loyalty."

"Fuck you, it's not like that."

"You've just got Ash left, isn't that right?" Teri leaned in close. "You took care of Dirk and me back at Medea, and you hired us the next day. And now with Titus and Oliver out of the way, Ash is the last one. I bet he's waiting anxiously for you to get around to him." She ducked out of the way of Alex's swipe at her head. "You don't have to worry about me and Dirk, we're perfectly willing to share Ash with you."

Alex rolled her eyes. "When you're done here, have Oliver set a course for Eurydice. We're all due for some shore leave."

"And by that you mean that you haven't seen Henry in a while, of course," Teri smirked.

"Shut up," Alex said over her shoulder, stepping through the door and out of the zero gravity zone of the bay. "And be careful with that plant, OK? I love you guys, I really do, but I'd rather we didn't all get dosed with that crap."

"Aye, aye, captain," Teri waved her fingers in the vicinity of her temple in a half-hearted salute.

#

When the door to Henry's quarters slid open, Henry saw Alex slumped against the door frame, her eyes tightly closed as she swayed on her feet, shaking.

"Hi," she said, her voice rough and cracking.

"Hi," Henry frowned at her. "Are you OK?"

"Not really, no," Alex swayed again, and Henry stepped forward to catch her before she fell. "Can I come in? It's really loud out here, and it's giving me a headache." She waved her hand at the main corridor of the station.

"Are you high?"

Alex laughed. "Not anymore," she shook her head. "Look, I—" she broke off, clapping her hand over her mouth, and pushed inside past Henry, heading straight for the bathroom. She barely made it inside before falling to her knees and throwing up. Henry kept his distance, trying to keep his stomach from rolling at the heaving sounds coming from Alex, and ignoring the clenching in his heart. He couldn't quite explain that last one.

When she finally came up for air, Henry bent down to help her up. Alex sat on the edge of the tub and let Henry brush her hair off her face, and sighed gratefully when Henry handed her a glass of water.

"I'm sorry, that wasn't how I intended to say hello," she said. "Can you get me my bag? I need to brush my teeth."

"What's going on?" Henry asked as he walked back to where she'd dropped her bag by the door. "Are you sick?"

Alex stood up and leaned on the sink, looking up at her reflection in the mirror. She was red-eyed and pale, with sweat-soaked hair plastered to her forehead. "You have no idea."

Henry handed Alex her toiletries bag and stood back while she brushed her teeth and washed her face. When she was done, she accepted the arm he offered and leaned on him as they walked out of the bathroom.

"All right, talk," Henry said once Alex was sitting on the couch. "What's going on?"

"I missed you," Alex said, pulling her knees up to her chest.

"So much that it made you throw up?" Henry raised an eyebrow. "I knew you liked me; I guess I just didn't realize how much."

"Ha ha," Alex muttered. "Very funny."

"Alex," Henry sat beside her and took one of her hands in his. "I've known you for a long time, but even if I didn't, I'd know something was wrong. What is it?"

"I... I'm..." Alex stammered and then lunged for the bathroom. When the worst of the dry heaving had passed, she curled up on the floor in the bathroom, resting her cheek against the cool tiles of the floor.

Henry knelt beside her and brushed her hair back, holding out his hand to help her up, but she shook her head. "I slept with Titus and Oliver," she blurted out.

"Ohhh-kay?" Henry stared at her. "Wait, is that why you're sick? Are you pregnant?"

Alex shook her head. "I couldn't be even if I wanted to, remember?" The military required all personnel to undergo a temporary sterilization procedure while they were on the active duty roster. Since the numerous methods of birth control weren't always effective with the stress of field duty affecting the chemistry of the body, a more long-term method of preventing unwanted pregnancies was instituted.

"I thought you were going to get that reversed?"

"I tried," Alex said. "Turns out it was a bit more permanent than normal." It wasn't easy to shrug while lying on the floor, but Alex managed it.

"You're not normally this upset when you sleep with someone," Henry sat down on the floor beside Alex, and she moved so that her head was resting against his leg. "Did something happen? Did they do something to hurt you?" He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep his fist from clenching, and moved it off Alex's shoulder to the floor where she wouldn't see it.

Alex shook her head. "We went on a delivery to Vaellel Three, and got dosed with some kind of... sex pollen. The villagers were only too happy to let us go at it, in honor of the sacred festival or whatever it was."

"That must have been awkward," Henry ran his fingers through her hair and forced himself to relax his other hand. "How were things back on the ship afterwards?"

"It was fine," Alex said after a pause. "They were concerned that I'd think they took advantage of me, so there was a bit of eggshell walking for a while there." She paused, closing her eyes and twisting the fabric of Henry's pants between her fingers.

"So if you're not pregnant, why the throwing up?"

"I'm trying to get clean," Alex said, turning her head so she was speaking into Henry's shirt.

"That's great!" Henry couldn't stop himself from beaming down at her, even though she couldn't see it. "When did you start?"

"A couple of days ago," Alex said, and rolled to the side to get to her knees. She bent over the toilet again, dry heaving. She started crying when she felt Henry's hands on her, holding back her hair and rubbing her shoulders. When the nausea passed, she slumped onto the floor beside Henry, curling up against his side.

"I don't want to die," she said quietly, tears choking her voice, and this time Henry knew exactly why his heart clenched at her words. "Oh, god, Henry, I don't want to die."

"You're not going to die," Henry said, pulling her closer to him. "It'll be rough, yeah, but you're not going to die."

Alex clung to him, the sobs wracking her body. At some point, Henry stood up, picked her up off the floor, and carried her to the bedroom. When he got into the bed beside her, Alex buried her face in his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

"We'll talk more tomorrow," he promised her, kissing the top of her head, and that was the last thing she remembered before she fell asleep.

#

In the morning, Alex woke up to the smell of coffee. Henry poked his head into the bedroom and held up a coffee mug.

"If you're not in the kitchen in two minutes, you're not getting any coffee," he announced and disappeared, leaving Alex torn. The coffee smelled really good, and she really wanted some, but she'd woken up to vague memories of the previous evening's events. She was fairly certain Henry had promised they would talk about it in the morning, which made her want to crawl under the covers and not come out for a long time.

"Alex!" Henry called from the kitchen. "I know what you're thinking, and it's not going to work."

Groaning, Alex pulled back the covers, and swung her legs off the bed. Henry had taken off her clothes at some point and she picked them up off the chair where they lay neatly folded, then put them down when she spotted a robe Henry had laid out for her. Tying the belt around her waist, she walked into the kitchen, hands held out zombie-like for the cup of coffee Henry held out as soon as he saw her coming. She hummed happily as she bent her head over the cup and inhaled.

"Thank you," she said, taking a sip. "We ran out of coffee last week, so we've been making do with Teri's concoctions."

Henry winced, topped up her cup, then turned back to the stove where he was making breakfast.

"Are you going to be okay to eat?"

"I can try," Alex said, getting up and walking around the table to join Henry by the stove. "Depends on what you're making." She looked over his shoulder at the pan and reached out to steal a piece of bacon, narrowly avoiding getting her hand smacked by his spatula.

"Keep that up and you're not getting anything," Henry grumbled, and Alex leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"Thanks for taking care of me last night," Alex told him, going back to her seat. "I know it wasn't pretty." When Henry didn't say anything, Alex frowned. "I can practically hear you thinking," she said. "Just say what you want to say."

"I'm not going to make you talk about anything you don't want to talk about," Henry said, loading up the plates and sliding one of them across to her.

Alex frowned down at her scrambled eggs on her plate and looked up. "As much as I'd like to avoid the subject, I really can't. If you'd rather not talk about it..."

"Alex, you came in, you threw up, and you told me you don't want to die. I've known you for a long time, and you're not the type to exaggerate, which means it's serious. What's going on?"

"Dirk says I'm dying," Alex said around a mouthful of eggs. "The Nanoximal's wrecked my system badly enough that it's breaking down."

"Is there anything that can be done to help?"

"Getting clean, for one," Alex said. "There are some treatments that Dirk's looking into, but they're mostly experimental, so there's no guarantee."

Henry took this in, eating his eggs and drinking his coffee. Finally, he set down his cup and looked up at her. "How long are you staying?"

Alex met his eyes over the rim of her cup. "How long will you have me?"

#

"There's a client I want to introduce you to," Henry said. They were walking around Eurydice Station, watching the ships coming and going in the dock outside. "There's a party next week, some sort of diplomatic thing, for an ambassador or something. I don't have all the details, but the client will be there, and he'd like to meet you."

"I'll let Teri know," Alex said. "They might not be happy about having shore leave cut short, but they'll be glad for the possibility of another job."

"It's just a meeting," Henry said. "Nothing might come out of it, so don't get their hopes up."

"They'll get to go to a fancy party, and they might get a job out of it," Alex said. "They'll like it if they know what's good for them."

Henry laughed. "Does anybody actually buy the tough captain act?"

"They used to," Alex said. "I think they've gotten to know me too well now."

Henry gave her a smile and wrapped an arm around her. "If everything works well with the client, he'll probably want you to do a smaller job before getting to the big one."

"I'll give it to Teri," Alex said. "I don't think I'm in any shape to be going anywhere just yet."

"We'll figure it out," Henry told her. "But I have to say something before we go any further. If you have to get clean to get better, I'll do whatever I can to help you. But the stakes are so high, Alex, if you slip up, even once, we're done. I'm not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself."

"If I slip up, even once, I'll probably be dead," Alex said, trying to ignore the shiver snaking down her spine, "so you don't have to worry."

#

"I can't believe you're making me dress up for this," Titus groused, fidgeting in his suit. "Why do I have to go? It's not like you're going to need me to make the deal."

"Because you're my security chief, and because I said so," Alex snapped. "If you don't like it, no one's making you stay. You can always just pack up your gear and get off my ship."

"Hey, I'm just asking a question," Titus glared at her. "Stop taking your bad mood out on me."

Alex clenched her fists and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and counting to ten. It wouldn't do to get into an argument with Titus, not when they were already in the elevator, heading up to the party. The rest of the crew stood behind them, wisely keeping quiet. Alex found herself wishing one of them would speak up, if only to break the tension in the elevator. She relaxed a bit when she felt Henry's hand on her lower back, the warmth seeping into her skin and taking some of the tension out of her. She leaned back into his touch, and told herself that no, she couldn't stop the elevator and go back to Henry's instead of going to the party and making nice with the client. She took solace in the fact that she would be handing off the _Nemesis_ to Teri and the rest of the crew for the next job.

The elevator stopped moving, and Alex lifted her head, standing up straight. "All right, let's do this," she said. Turning to Titus, she nodded to him. "I'm sorry if you're uncomfortable, Titus, but I'll feel better if you're here with me, OK? I promise, I won't make you do it again any time soon."

"All right," Titus nodded, still looking like he wanted nothing more than to tear off his fancy jacket and run as far away from the party as he could.

"Great," Dirk said cheerfully, wrapping his arms around Alex and Titus. "Now that we've all made up, let's go party!"

Alex stopped him with a hand on his chest. "Dirk, do I have to tell you again about proper behavior and not doing anything stupid?"

"No, ma'am," he had the grace to look sheepish.

"Teri, make sure he behaves himself," Alex let him go.

Teri frowned. "Why do I have to babysit him?"

"Because you're the only one he listens to."

Teri considered this for a moment. "You've got a point," she admitted, and turned to Dirk to smooth out his jacket. "I'll make sure he's good," he told Alex.

The elevator doors slid open and Henry led Alex out into the ballroom, his fingers brushing against her skin, left exposed by the straps of her dress. Alex turned her head to him slightly and gave him a smile.

"Thank you," she said out of the corner of her mouth.

"What for?"

"Everything," she said. "You didn't have to do this." Henry's hand stopped moving and he nudged her forward.

"Sir Logan Carrow, this is Captain Alexandra Porter." Alex held out her hand, expecting the pompous looking man in a too-tight jacket to just shake it, but he raised it to his mouth instead, planting a just-this-side-of-too-wet kiss on it. Alex bit back a grimace and waited until he released her hand before discreetly wiping it on her dress. She made a mental note to have the dress cleaned.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Sir Logan," she said, giving him a slight bow.

"Henry has been telling me about you and your crew, Captain Porter," Carrow said, gesturing to Henry.

"All good things, I hope," Alex gave Carrow a smile. "Henry didn't tell me much about the job," she added.

"Surely we don't have to get _right_ to business, do we?" Carrow stepped to her side, opposite Henry, and slid an arm around her waist. He would have been almost a head shorter than Alex even if she hadn't been wearing heels, and when he turned to her, his eyes were exactly level with her chest. To his credit, he made an attempt to make eye contact with Alex, but it was a mostly futile attempt. His hand on Alex's back was too warm and too sweaty, and she suppressed a shudder.

"Of course not," she said.

"Fabulous," Carrow told her. "I demand at least once dance with you, Alexandra," he said, leading her toward the dance floor. Turning back to Henry, he called over his shoulder, "you don't mind if I steal her away for a bit, do you, Henry?"

Alex watched Henry shake his head, and then Carrow was whirling her away onto the dance floor, clammy hands clutching at her, and his eyes drifting downward more frequently than was appropriate. She endured the dance, ignoring Carrow' clumsy attempts at groping, and when the dance was over, started back to the table where Henry was waiting.

"Are you sure I can't convince you to grant me another dance?" Carrow' hand was clammy on her back, fingers playing with the straps of her dress.

"Perhaps in a while," Alex told him. "I'm afraid I've been a bit under the weather lately."

"Oh?" Carrow frowned, and Alex realized that had been the wrong thing to say.

"I'm almost back to normal," she said quickly. "It won't interfere in any work-related duties, of course."

"Of course," Carrow nodded.

"Perhaps we could talk a bit about what kind of job it is you need done while I rest?" Alex suggested when they reached the table. "That way we'll have more time for dancing later." She gave Carrow as brilliant a smile as she could manage. Henry held out a chair for her and she sank gratefully into it, slipping her shoes off under the table. Carrow was not only prone to inappropriate touching and staring at her breasts, but he also stepped on her feet quite a lot. Alex had gritted her teeth while they danced, for fear of offending him and having the job end before it even started. When Carrow slid his chair closer to hers, crowding into her space, she gave Henry a panicked glance she hoped Carrow didn't notice.

"Everything all right?" Henry asked quietly, and Alex resisted the urge to reach over and take his hand. Instead, she nodded and reached for her water glass.

"Just a little warm and dizzy," she said. "I think the excitement of the party is getting to me. I'll be all right in a few minutes, and in the meantime, Sir Logan can tell us about the job." She gave Carrow a pointed look.

"Yes, of course," Carrow cleared his throat and took the hint, backing off ever so slightly. "The job is two-fold, and depending on how well you do in the first part, we'll proceed to the next. While I have every confidence in Mister Priest's opinion of you," he nodded to Henry, "I'd like to see how you handle things for myself." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a dataflex. "This has the information on the first job. It's a simple, uh, retrieval," he lowered his voice on the last word. "I need it handled discreetly, needless to say."

"Of course," Alex nodded, taking another sip of her water. "What's the timeline on this?" She picked up the dataflex and handed it to Henry, who slid it into his jacket's inner pocket.

"Within a month," Carrow told her. "If you can't have it done by then, I'll have to look elsewhere."

"I think you'll find that we're just the crew you're looking for, Sir Logan," Alex gave him a smile. Under the table, she slid her shoes back on. "Now, how about another dance?"

Watching Carrow puff up like a peacock, Alex suppressed the giggle that threatened to escape her lips and gave Henry a smile when she felt his fingers brush hers as she walked past him. She saw him watching as she let Carrow pull her into a too-tight hold, his lips pressed into a tight line as he kept his eyes on them. She had to turn away from Henry when she felt Carrow' face getting dangerously close to her chest. Gently, she used her finger to raise Carrow' face up so that he was looking at her.

"Sir Logan, please," she said, as calmly and politely as she could. Right at that moment, she was very proud of herself for not punching him, and to hell with the job.

Carrow leered at her, and made no attempt to pretend otherwise as he went right back to staring down her dress. Alex turned her head this way and that until she spotted Henry and mouthed "help me!" at him, nodding down at Carrow, who was almost nuzzling her chest. Alex's frown got deeper, and he stood up, making his way through the crowd.

"May I cut in, Sir Logan?" He tapped Carrow' shoulder.

Carrow looked up from Alex's chest and frowned, but stepped back from her and nodded to Henry. "Be my guest," he said, handing Alex's hand off to Henry. "Enjoy the dance," he told them as he walked back to the table.

"Thank you," Alex said, leaning her forehead against Henry's. "He was starting to breathe funny, and my back was starting to hurt from leaning away from him."

Henry made a noise that sounded like a growl, and pulled Alex closer to him. "You're not going to try and lean away from me, are you?"

"Only if you start breathing funny."

The music changed to a slow tempo song, and Alex grinned at Henry. "Looks like you rescued me just in time," she said. "You don't have to dance with me for the whole song if you don't want to."

"I like dancing with you," Henry told her, pulling her close.

"I like dancing with you, too," Alex said, leaning forward to put her head on Henry's shoulder, then pulling back. "So, uh, please don't take this the wrong way, but I really have to go and throw up." She pulled away from him, half-running through the dancing crowd, heading for the restroom across the room. She saw most of her crew notice her and start paying attention to what was going on. She waved everyone off, and then she was at the door to the washroom and on her knees in a stall, throwing up what little she had eaten before the party.

It was a long time before her stomach settled down, but she was finally able to leave the stall and stand at the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She heard the door open behind her and braced herself for a concerned Teri. When she lifted her head, however, she saw the person standing behind her wasn't Teri, but Titus.

"This is the ladies' room, Titus, what are you doing in here?"

"Nobody else was willing to come in and check on you," Titus lifted his chin defiantly. "I wasn't going to leave you in here alone."

"I can take care of myself," Alex told him, reaching for a towel to dry her face.

"Look, Captain," Titus started off. "Alex," he corrected. "You know you can talk to us, right? We're here for you if you need anything."

"I already told you, Titus, I'm fine. And what I need right now is for you to get the hell out of here so I can clean up. If you'd rather stay here, tell me, so I can go somewhere else and brush my teeth in peace."

"Alex, please—" Titus started again, and Alex threw up her hands.

"Fine, have it your way," she said. "Now get out of my way," she pushed past him and into the narrow hallway outside of the ballroom, Titus following close on her heels. When Alex stopped suddenly right outside of the door, Titus walked into her back. He started to apologize, and Alex waved at him to shut up, watching the scene down the corridor.

Oliver stood with his back against the wall, three uniformed and armed guards surrounding him, one of them speaking to Oliver intently. Oliver shook his head, looking like he was about to back into the wall to get away from the guards. When one of them reached out and grabbed Oliver's arm, Alex approached the guards.

"What's going on here? Oliver, are you all right?"

"Step aside, ma'am, this does not concern you," one of the guards turned to stand in front of her.

"Like hell it doesn't," Alex said. "That's my navigator you've got your hands on. Let him go." She could hear the guard holding onto Oliver's arm telling Oliver to come with them, and she tried to push past the guard standing in her way. "Hey, you, did you hear me? Let him go!"

The guard reached out for Alex, taking hold of her shoulder, and she grabbed his wrist, twisting it and pulling his arm behind his back. One of the other guards stepped behind her and wrapped an arm around her neck, choking her and dragging her away from the man whose arm she was holding.

"Captain!" Oliver shouted and tried to get to her, but the third guard grabbed him and shoved him against the wall, making Oliver cry out.

Alex did her best to shake her head to clear the stars from her vision and drove her foot backward, digging the heel of her shoe into the guard's calf, then dragging it down. She felt the fabric of his pants rip under her heel, and she was pretty sure she'd actually dug the heel into his skin. Good, she thought as he howled in pain. Not so good, she thought immediately after, when the guard didn't release her, the arm he'd wrapped around her throat tightening. She repeated the kick, but was ready for it, the force of his kick almost knocking her legs out from under her.

She stumbled slightly, twisting to the side, until she had the opening she needed. She drove her elbow into the guard's solar plexus as hard as she could, and he shoved her forward as he doubled over, wheezing for breath. Not willing to take any chances, Alex closed in, driving the heel of her shoe into the instep of the guard's foot. The dress shoes he wore were nowhere near enough protection and he howled again. Alex followed up by driving the heel of her hand into his nose, then brought up her knee to slam into his groin.

By the time she stepped away from him, he was on his knees, moaning in pain as he tried to figure out which area of his body to clutch at first. One of the other guards advanced on Alex, reaching for his weapon, and Alex whirled on him, delivering a high kick that caught the edge of his neck and sent him to the floor, clutching his throat as he gasped for air.

The third guard shoved Oliver back against the wall and turned toward Alex, drawing his weapon and moving in on her. He pointed the blaster at her midsection, and Titus launched himself at the guard with a shout, tackling him to the ground. After a brief tussle, the guard overpowered him and flipped them over, pinning Titus to the floor under him. He pointed the blaster and Titus' head and Alex closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see Titus die. The crackling sound of blaster fire never came, and the next sound was someone shouting from the other side of the hallway.

"Sergeant, stop!" The man running towards them was out of breath, his silver embroidered sash hanging crooked off his shoulder.

"Ambassador," the guard moved off Titus and got to his feet, holstering his weapon.

Alex felt the blood drain out of her face. The last thing she needed was to get her crew involved in a diplomatic incident, even if it was in defense of one her people. As she straightened her dress and picked up her shoes, she braced herself for a confrontation with the ambassador.

To her surprise, the diplomat approached Oliver first, holding out his hand and speaking intently in low tones. After helping Titus stand up, Alex slid on her shoes and walked towards them, glaring at the guard who moved to stop her. Thankfully, he got out of her way and she reached Oliver's side.

"Captain," the ambassador turned to her. "I'd like to apologize for my guards' behavior," he said. "I sent them to deliver a message to Mister Hall, with a request for a private conversation."

"No offense, ambassador," Alex said, "but you might want to educate them on the meaning of the word. Requests usually don't come at the hands of armed men trying to force you to come with them."

"Rest assured, they will be dealt with, Captain." The ambassador held out his hand to her. "I am Ambassador Grimaldi, from Casadia Archele. Perhaps I should have delivered my request in person."

"Perhaps, yes," Alex nodded. "It's all done and over with, however, so perhaps we can start over?"

"Very well," Grimaldi drew himself up to his full height and straightened his sash, then turned to Oliver. "Mister Hall, may I request a private conversation?"

Oliver looked dubious, glancing from the ambassador to Alex and back to the ambassador. Titus pushed his way past the guards to stand on the other side of Oliver from Alex.

"Don't do it, Oliver," he said. "If he just wanted to talk, he would have come to you from the start, instead of sending his goons."

Grimaldi his breath to protest, and Oliver headed him off, holding up his hand.

"Titus, please, don't make things worse. I'll go with the ambassador, in the interest of keeping the peace." He turned to Alex. "If that's all right with you, captain."

"If he's not back in ten minutes," Alex told Grimaldi, "we're coming after him."

"I wouldn't expect any less of you, captain," the diplomat held out his hand and when Alex took it, kissed her hand lightly. "Again, please accept my most sincere apologies, captain."

"Alex," Titus hissed in her ear. "You can't possibly let him go off with these people!"

"The ambassador asked nicely," Alex told him. "We've got no reason to believe they mean him any harm."

"Except for how he sent his armed goons for Oliver in the first place." Titus scowled at the retreating Grimaldi's back, as he strolled away with Oliver, speaking to him quietly.

"He's an ambassador, Titus," Alex told him. "He won't risk a diplomatic incident. And neither will we," she added, grabbing Titus'' arm and stopping him from following the two men. "We're going to wait for him right here, and we're not doing to do anything."

Teri and Dirk came running around the corner, followed by Henry and Ash.

"Captain," Teri came up to Alex, nodding. "Is everything all right?"

"Apparently Ambassador Grimaldi has taken an interest in Oliver," Alex told her. "We had a bit of a misunderstanding, but it's all been sorted out."

"Misunderstanding, my ass," Titus scowled at Alex. "Armed goons try to abduct him, and she calls it a misunderstanding."

" _Mister Casey_ ," Alex put a bit of steel in her voice. "Are you questioning my command decisions?"

"No, ma'am," Titus kept scowling. "Just making sure that you're not distracted by _other things_ ," he added with a pointed glance at the door of the washroom where he had found her. He looked like he was about to say something else, but Henry's arrival at Alex's side interrupted him.

"You OK?" Henry asked, his hand warm on Alex's back.

"I'm fine," she gave him a smile. "Titus is just concerned about Oliver, as am I. Apparently the ambassador's guards misinterpreted his request for a private conversation and acted with more force than was necessary. It's all sorted now."

"That's not what I meant," Henry said, pitching his voice low enough to be just for her.

"I know what you meant," Alex kept smiling as she turned toward him, stepping close and wrapping an arm around his waist. Leaning against Henry's shoulder, Alex kept an eye on Titus, who was pacing the corridor nervously, and Teri, Dirk, and Ash, who stood by the view port, looking out at the ships outside.

When Oliver came back, almost exactly ten minutes later, he was quiet and thoughtful, shrugging away all the questions Titus and the others threw at him.

"I'm fine, really," he said.

"You're not fine," Titus insisted. "What did Grimaldi want from you?"

"I'll tell you later," Oliver shook his head. "Please, Titus, just give me some time, OK?"

Titus glanced from Alex to Oliver several times, then finally settled on Oliver. "All right."

Oliver turned to Alex, running his fingers through his hair. "Captain, I know you said you wanted us all here for the meeting with the client, but with your permission, I'd like to head back to the ship."

"Of course," Alex nodded. "The meet with the client's done anyway. Do you want anyone to come with you?" She glanced at Titus, who looked like he was about to jump out of his skin with tension.

"I'm coming with you," Titus told Oliver, moving to stand beside him.

"You don't have to do that," Oliver said. "I'll be all right. You should stay and enjoy the party." Titus looked undeterred and didn't move from where he stood, and Oliver gave him a small grateful smile. Before they could start heading for the elevator, one of the ambassadorial guards approached him, ignoring the openly hostile way Titus was glaring at him.

"Ambassador Grimaldi is willing to give you time to consider your decision," he said. "Time is of the utmost importance, however, and the ambassador requests that you do not take too long to make it."

"Please tell the ambassador I will do my best," Oliver told him and watched the guard head back down the hallway.

"If we're done here," Dirk came up to Alex's side, Teri and Ash in tow, "can we go back to the party? There's alcohol and food, and we're not there to enjoy them!"

"Go ahead," Alex nodded. "Just try to be back on the _Nemesis_ at a reasonable time tomorrow."

When Dirk, Teri, and Ash were gone, Alex turned to Oliver and Titus. "You two have a good night," she told them, then held out her hand to Henry. "Come on, I owe you a dance. Hopefully we'll actually get to finish this one."

The doors into the ballroom swung open for them, and Henry pulled Alex into a spin, leading her out onto the dance floor. Before the doors slid shut and the crowd pulled in around them, Alex saw Titus standing in the hallway, a deep frown on his face, looking back and forth between her and Henry, and Oliver, standing beside him. As the doors closed, she saw Titus turn to Oliver and the two of them head back to the ship. At some point, she would need to talk to Titus about his behavior, but for the moment, she was perfectly happy to relax into Henry's embrace, and enjoy the party for as long as she could.

#

"Exactly how long are you planning on staying?" Teri watched from where she lounged on Alex's bed as Alex packed the last of her things and closed her bag. "You're taking a lot of stuff."

"You know how I am with packing," Alex grinned. "I've found it's better to overpack and not need something, than underpack and be stuck wearing the same underwear more than once." She hefted the bag off the bed experimentally. "As for how long I'm staying, you have a month to get the job done, so probably around that long."

"I still can't believe you're giving me the ship on this one," Teri said. "I know I've been bugging you to let me do more, but I never expected you to actually do it."

"If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't let you do it," Alex told her. "I need some more time off, and you guys don't really need me on this."

Teri got up and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, facing Alex. "What's going on, Alex, really? I've never known you to take time off voluntarily, not when we have a job. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Alex said, looking away. "I just want some more time off."

"No, you said you _need_ time off," Teri said. "That implies more than just a desire for some furlough. If you don't tell me, I'll just go back to my theory that you're pregnant."

Alex sighed and sat down beside Teri, setting the bag at her feet. "Fine," she said. "Dirk knows already, and you'd have wheedled it out of him anyway—"

"Hey!" Teri protested. "I don't wheedle!"

"Yes, you do," Alex said. "There's no keeping secrets between you and Ash and Dirk."

"That's because we're honest with each other," Teri said smugly.

"That's because none of you can keep a secret to save your life," Alex laughed. The laughter faded, and she stared off into the distance. "I'm dying," she said.

Teri took a deep breath. "The Nanox?"

Alex nodded, and didn't look meet Teri's eyes.

"Is there anything you can do to stop it?"

"Dirk's looking into some options for me. For now, I need to get clean, which is why I'm staying at Henry's. I don't want to be locked in here with you guys while I'm detoxing."

Teri put an arm around Alex, leaning close and pulling Alex into a hug. "I'm sorry," she said. "If there's anything I can do..."

"Just get the job done and get everyone back in one piece," Alex leaned her head on Teri's shoulder.

"And by everyone you mean the ship, right?" Teri smirked, and Alex laughed as well.

"Obviously," she said. "I'm serious, though, be careful," she sat up straight, serious. "Dynadus isn't like the Core Systems, it's dangerous."

"I know that, Alex," Teri said. "Relax, we'll be fine."

"I'll be expecting regular updates while you're gone," Alex stood up, fully back in captain mode. "Whatever happens, keep Carrow' name out of it, that's the deal."

"I know that, Alex," Teri repeated.

"And whatever you do, don't tell Titus and Oliver that I'm..."

"Gotcha," Teri sketched a vague salute.

"They don't need to know," Alex said.

"And it doesn't help that Titus seems to have a bee in his bonnet about Henry lately," Teri smirked. "Maybe he's worried that you'll take his kid, raise it with Henry, and he won't get to see it."

Alex stared at Teri in horror. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. Whatever has Titus all riled up, it'll have to wait until you get back." She bent down and picked up her bag. "Well, I'd better get going so you guys can get on your way."

"Everyone's waiting in the loading bay," Teri said as they left the room. "So we can see you off."

Alex groaned. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know, but I wanted to. It's the first time you're letting us go off by ourselves. Hope you don't end up regretting it."

"I won't," Alex told her. "You're a capable officer, and a good friend, and I trust you with her," she brushed a hand over the wall of the corridor. "That said, try not to bang her up too much, OK?"

They reached the loading bay and Alex took a deep breath, clearing her throat as she came in. Dirk and Ash turned to her, grinning widely.

"I expect you all to be on your best behavior," she glared at them, fighting not to grin back. "For all intents and purposes, Teri is the captain on this mission."

"Aye aye, cap'n," Ash drawled, draping himself over Dirk's shoulder. "We'll treat her just like we do you."

"Oh, goody," Alex rolled her eyes. "You'll run amok and ignore her, just like you do me. How fun for you, Teri," she said, turning around.

"Don't worry about me," Teri grinned. "I've got my ways of dealing with them."

"I'm sure you do," Alex said. "Just make sure the job gets done properly, will you?"

"We will," Teri nodded. "Now go, get out of here, we've got a job to do and you're holding us up." She pulled Alex into another hug, not quite wanting to let go.

"Here," Dirk held out a box to her, pushing Ash off him. "It's not a lot, but it should come in handy over the next little while. Everything you need's inside."

Alex took the box and tucked it under her arm, giving Dirk a nod as thanks, then headed toward the exit ramp. Henry was waiting for her, and she handed him her bag and the box Dirk had given her. When she turned back toward the ship, she saw Titus glaring at her and Henry. He looked like he wanted to say something, and Alex waited to see if he did, but he kept quiet. Shrugging, she stepped forward.

"Be careful, don't do anything stupid, and try to get the job done with a minimum of fuss."

"Yes, mother," Teri rolled her eyes. "You take care of yourself, and let us worry about the job."

At her words, Titus shot Teri a surprised glance. Alex was sure this time he would speak up, but instead he glared when Henry came up beside her. Alex rolled her eyes and waved to everyone on the ship.

"Check in with me when you can, and I'll see you all when you get back." Tempting as it was to call Titus out on his strange behavior, it wouldn't do anyone any good to delay the _Nemesis_ ' departure any longer. She'd just have to deal with Titus when they got back.

#

"Do you think we could just stay here and not move all day?" Alex laid her head on Henry's chest and pulled the blankets up over them. "I kinda don't wanna do anything else."

"I'm giving serious consideration to your proposal," Henry muttered into her hair. "Although we might need to move to get some food."

"Pfft, who needs food?" Alex said.

"You do," Henry told her. "That, and you've got an injection due this morning."

"Ugh, don't remind me," she said, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. "I hate those damned things."

"I'm not too fond of them, either, but they _are_ helping," Henry rolled onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow, looking down at her. "You look much better than you did a month ago."

"I feel better, too," Alex admitted. "Thank you," she told him. "For everything." Wrapping a hand around the back of his head, she pulled him down into a kiss.

"Don't think you can distract me," Henry said when they broke apart.

"Oh, I think I can," Alex grinned, wriggling under Henry and pulling the blankets up over their heads.

An hour later, Henry got out of bed despite Alex's best efforts to keep him there. When she pouted, he relented enough to give her another kiss, then pulled her out of bed with him.

"Come on," he said. "The _Nemesis_ docks this afternoon, and you'll need time to come down from the Xocet."

"I don't wanna go back to work," Alex whined, pulling on her bathrobe. "Maybe I should give the ship to Teri full time. I could stay here, live the life of luxury."

Henry paused at the door, looking back at her. "You've got a place here, if you decided to stay."

"I may just take you up on that," Alex said quietly. She tied the belt on her bathrobe and went to Henry, wrapping her arms around him. "You're far too good for me, you know that?"

"Yeah, I know," Henry grinned and kissed her.

"Want me to show you how grateful I am?" Alex slid her hands under Henry's shirt, and he caught her wrists, bringing her hands up to his mouth and kissing her fingers.

"None of that," he said, ducking her hands when she tried to touch his face. "Things to do, remember?"

Alex pulled away. "Define 'things'," she grinned. Henry raised an eyebrow, and Alex relented, pouting a little. "Fine, be that way," she said. "Let's go eat something, and then I'll take the Xocet. Whatever you've got planned for today, I hope you don't need me, 'cuz I'm going to be useless most of the day."

"It won't be all day," Henry said as they walked into the kitchen. "With the lower dose, you'll be fine in a few hours."

Alex made a face. "I know that's what should happen, but it never does. I always feel like shit."

"You're almost at the end of the initial treatment," Henry told her. He took a shake out of the fridge and handed it to her. "Once you're done with that, it'll get easier."

Alex downed half her shake in three gulps. "I really hope you're right."

"Whatever happens, you're not going to go through it alone," Henry said. "You've got the crew, and you've got me. We'll help you through it."

#

"Now that the first job for Carrow is done, I'll meet with him and hopefully we'll get the actual job he wanted us for," Alex said. The crew of the _Nemesis_ was gathered together for a post-job briefing. "From what I can see, you guys handled yourselves nicely, so congratulations. The news barely made a blip on the networks. The second newscast of the day, it wasn't even mentioned."

"I heard we got bumped by the big _Beyond Hyboria_ news about Ridge Cortland having a breakdown on set during the live show," Dirk said. "I hope you guys have a recording, I want to see it for myself."

" _Anyway_ ," Alex ignored him. "We've got a couple of days of free time before Carrow gets here, so get some rest, have some fun, and stay out of trouble. I'll be on the station if anyone needs me."

"Captain," Oliver stood up before Alex could dismiss them. "May I have a moment of everyone's time? I'd like to say something."

Alex nodded and sat down. "Go ahead."

"I owe you all an explanation of what happened the last time we were here," Oliver said. "When I spoke with Grimaldi, the ambassador from Casadia Archele, he told me something." He paused, shifting from foot to foot, swallowing nervously. "I have an old picture of my parents," he reached into his pocket and pulled out an old dataflex, bent and cracked at the edges. He handed it to Alex, and she couldn't help but smile at the picture of a young couple, arms around each other, staring into each other's eyes with matching expressions of what could only be love on their faces. She was almost loath to hand it over to Teri, not wanting to stop looking at the happiness radiating from the couple.

Oliver cleared his throat and continued. "Grimaldi showed me a portrait of the Casadian princess, Viviane," he took out another dataflex, this one smaller and brand new. When he handed it to Alex, she gasped. The young woman in the portrait, although younger and more formally dressed than the woman in the first picture, was undeniably the same person.

"There was going to be a big party, to celebrate her officially becoming the heiress to the throne," Oliver continued as Alex handed the dataflex to Teri. "A few days before the announcement, there was a coup d'état, led by the king's brother, who took power. The princess was taken off-planet for her safety, accompanied by the captain of her guard. They went into hiding, fell in love, and got married. Not long after they had a child, the new king's people found them, so they gave the child to someone so he'd be kept safe. When the princess and her captain were captured, the people who had taken the child in raised him as their own. They didn't know who the child's parents really were, so he grew up unaware of his true identity.

"The king told a story to the people of the planet, claiming that terrorists killed the old king and queen and kidnapped the princess, and he was acting as a regent until the princess could be found and rescued from her abductors. In reality, he locked the princess in a secret prison, and got rid of the captain by sending him off to be sold as a slave."

"So, what, you're the real heir to the throne of Casadia Archele?" Ash snickered, then looked around as people glared at him. "What? He's clearly the child that was sent into hiding and raised unaware of who he really was."

"Yeah, that's what Grimaldi told me. He said there's an underground resistance on Casadia, and they've been looking for Princess Viviane and her family for years, so they can restore the throne to its rightful owners."

"How does he know you're the child?"

"Because he had one of his retinue get some of my blood for gene testing," Oliver said. "She scratched me with a pin, made it look like an accident. I didn't believe him until I saw the test results, not even when he showed me the portrait."

"After you came back from talking with Grimaldi, his guard told you not to take too long to make your decision," Alex said. "What do you have to decide?"

"They want me to come back to Casadia with them, help with the resistance."

"And what have you decided?"

"I'm not sure yet," Oliver shook his head. "I don't know if I'm up for it. And, well, I like it here," he gestured around the ship. "I've got things and people I care about here," he glanced at Titus with a soft smile on his lips. "But that's what I wanted to say; if I leave, it's not because of anyone here. These people are expecting me to step up, and while I'm not sure I can handle it, I may decide to try."

"Whatever decision you make," Alex told him, "you've got our support. Right, guys?"

"I'm not calling you 'Your Highness'," Ash announced. "But if you decide to go back and things go in your favor, I hope you'll remember your lowly smuggler friends."

"Congratulations, Princess," Dirk grinned at Oliver. "Now, since we've got a couple of days' leave, can we go? I hear a large comfy bed calling my name." He winked in Teri and Ash's direction.

Alex looked to Oliver. "Is there anything else?"

"No, captain, I just wanted to tell you all what might happen. Thank you."

"All right," Alex waved to everyone in the room. "Go ahead and scatter, but check in occasionally. I'll keep you guys up to date on how things go with the ambassador."

Alex had barely finished speaking when Dirk and Ash shot to their feet and were out of the room, Teri following them at a more leisurely pace. Oliver spoke quietly to Titus for a moment and slipped out, heading toward his quarters, leaving only Alex and Titus in the room. Titus stayed in his seat, watching Alex move around the room, then finally got to his feet, glaring at Alex.

"You're not going to tell him, are you?"

"Tell him what?"

"Don't play dumb, _captain_ , I know what's going on."

"Why don't you tell me, then, because I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know you're pregnant," Titus said. "And I know that either Oliver or I are the father." Alex opened her mouth to speak, but Titus held up a hand to stop her. "Look, if I'm the father, I want to be part of the child's life, and I'm sure Oliver feels the same way, but I love Oliver and I'm not leaving him. You've got Henry, and he's obviously head over heels in love with you. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of him raising my child, but if he's your choice, then I'll have to get used to the idea."

"Titus," Alex gawked at him. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"None of us were clearly in the right frame of mind to think about protection back on Vaellel Three, and you've been sick and throwing up since almost right after we got back," Titus explained. "I know you said you don't want to talk about it, but there's another _life_ at stake here, and we need to make some sort of decision."

"I'm not pregnant, you moron," Alex glared at him. "I'm addicted to Nanoximal, and I've been _detoxing_. That's what's been making me sick." She paused, watching Titus step back, looking thoughtful. She wasn't sure what she was seeing on his face, relief or disappointment or something else. "I couldn't have gotten pregnant even if I'd wanted to," she told him. "I was in the military, remember?"

"That's not supposed to be permanent," Titus muttered.

"Yeah, well, shit happens," Alex said. She thought for a moment about what Titus had said. "Wait, what do you mean, Henry's in love with me?"

#

"What's all this?" Henry stared at the dataflexis littering the table.

"Sorry," Alex glanced up from the table. "I'll get this cleaned up in a minute, I'm almost done."

Henry walked over to her and looked over the maps layered one over another. "What are you looking at?"

"Sir Logan hired us for the second job," Alex told him. "He sent over the data earlier this afternoon."

"So what's the job?"

"He wants us to try and find the _Pathos Verdes_ ," Alex said, then laughed when Henry stared at her. "Yeah, I know. But hey, who am I to stop the _very rich_ client from paying me a shitload of money to look for a mythical lost ship?"

"How exactly does he expect you to find it?"

"Oh, he's had people looking for it for ages, apparently. Or at least keeping an eye and an ear out for rumors. He's put them all together, the supposed sightings, and so on. It's actually a pretty thorough job," Alex nodded at the maps in front of them. "I don't know if it's anything worthwhile, but hey, it'll be a nice quiet job for a change." She started to pick up the maps, then turned to Henry. "Wanna come with me?"

Henry pointed at the map. "You'd have to do several jumps to get there. Which means that I can't come with you."

"There aren't any gates in this region," Alex swept her hand over the area of the map containing markers for possible sightings of the _Pathos Verdes_. "We'll be taking the slow route, going sub-light. I'm serious, I'd like you to come with me." She glanced at the table beside the couch, where the case containing the Xocet sat, still open from when she'd used it earlier. "I know it's a lot to ask of you, after everything you've done for me. But I don't know if I can do this without you, Henry."

"You can do anything you put your mind to," Henry said. "But since you're going sub-light, I don't see a reason for me not to come," he added when Alex's face fell. "It'll be nice to get off the station for a while." He grinned as Alex threw her arms around him and kissed him. "I'm pretty sure your, uh, security chief is going to have a problem with that. I think he hates me."

"Titus' issues are his own problem, he'll find a way to deal with them if he know what's good for him," Alex said.

"If you say so," Henry told her. "So when do we leave?"

"I need to restock provisions, and brief the crew, but I'd say a couple of days. How much time do you need to get ready?"

"I can be on board tonight," Henry said. "There aren't a lot of loose ends to tie up here, shouldn't take longer than a few hours."

"Take your time," Alex told him, pulling away from him and turning to the maps on the table. "I'm just saying, your bed's a lot more comfortable than the ones on the _Nemesis_." She started to pick up the maps and roll up the dataflexis.

"So what you're saying is you want to sleep in my bed for as long as possible," Henry grinned and moved to help her roll up the largest of the maps.

"Well, yeah," Alex said. "I've made a lot of improvements to the _Nemesis_ , but comfortable beds continue to elude me."

"Come on, then," Henry glanced toward the open bedroom door. "We should take full advantage of what time we have left here."

"Good idea," Alex said, tidying everything into a neat pile on the table. "We've got plenty of time for packing later."

Henry took Alex's hand, leading her toward the bedroom. "I knew you'd see it my way."

#

Predictably, Alex had to repeat herself three times in the first twenty minutes of the briefing.

"So, wait, let me get this straight, we're going to go look for a lost ship that may or may not actually have been mythical?" Dirk goggled at her, sitting on the arm of his favorite armchair, leaning forward so that his whole body was a tense curve.

"Yes, Dirk," Alex said patiently. She couldn't really blame him. Her reaction was pretty much the same, until she started looking at the material Sir Logan sent over. "We're going to go look for a lost ship that may or may not actually have been mythical. And we're going to get paid a shitload of money for it."

"What the hell," Dirk shrugged, finally sinking into the armchair, assuming his usual slouch. "Count me in."

Alex looked around the room. "Anyone else need me to repeat myself again?" There was no answer, and Alex slid the dataflex with all the data into the computer and put the images up on the display in the middle of the room.

"This is where we'll be going. There are no jump gates anywhere in the vicinity, so we'll be going sub-light." She ignored Dirk's groan and kept going. "That's why we have a hold full of supplies, in case any of you were paying attention to what's been going on in the last couple of days."

"What happens if we don't find it?" Teri asked, scrolling through the maps. "There's a lot of territory here, and nothing more than rumors to go on. We could be out there for years and not find anything."

"Carrow didn't specify how long he expects us to look, but I'm thinking we go out there, take a couple of months to cruise around, and then if we haven't found anything, we come back. He's only paying us part of the fee upfront, the rest will come when we find the ship and retrieve its data core."

"Holy shit," Ash said quietly, and Alex turned toward him to see him staring at a dataflex sheet. He looked up at her, wide-eyed. "Everyone got this much?"

"Divided seven ways, yeah," Alex nodded, and suddenly everyone's eyes were on her.

" _Seven_ ways?" Teri raised an eyebrow. "We taking on extra crew for this job?"

"Henry's coming with us," Alex said, "and he's getting a cut."

"What the hell do we need him for?" Titus grumbled, earning himself a glare from Alex. "What? You've got a full complement for a _Valkyrie_ -class ship with the five of us plus you. We don't need an extra body coming along."

"He's coming along because I asked him to," Alex told him. "If you have a problem with that, you're free to leave anytime. Henry can always have your job, if you don't want it."

Titus held up his hands defensively. "Hey, as long as he stays out of my way and doesn't interfere with me doing my job, what do I care if he wants to tag along?"

"What exactly is your job, Titus?" Ash asked. "I mean, I know you're supposed to be the security officer, but this is a pretty small ship, and it's not like you actually do anything, you know, security...ish."

Titus glared at him and crossed his arms over his chest, not answering Ash. Alex rolled her eyes and turned off the map display.

"Does anyone have anything useful to contribute to this discussion?" Without waiting for an answer, she packed up the dataflexis. "If any of you want to look at these, they'll be in the archives. Now, you've got until the morning to wrap up whatever business you've got left unfinished. We're leaving at 0800 hours. If you're not here, we're leaving without you."

Alex ignored the unsubtle glares Titus was sending her way and headed for her quarters.

#

In the morning, Henry was the last one to arrive, strolling up the ramp with his bag slung over his shoulder. Alex tried not to grin too widely when she saw him, bumping her shoulder against his as they walked toward the living quarters instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Titus standing in a doorway, eyeing Henry with narrowed eyes. Henry saw Titus as well and spoke quietly to Alex.

"See? I told you he hates me."

"He'll be fine," Alex frowned. "And if he tries anything, I can always threaten to throw him out of the airlock."

When they reached Alex's quarters, Henry stopped, dropping his bag at his feet. "I need to do something," he says, taking her hands, "and I need you to let me do it."

Alex cleared her throat. "You want to go through my room, make sure I don't have any Nanox stashed away." She keyed in her code and opened the door, motioning Henry inside. "Go, do it, I'll wait out here." Henry gave her a curious look, and went inside. Alex slid to the floor opposite the door and settled in to wait.

When Henry had been gone for half an hour, Alex stood up, stretching her legs, and approached the door. She'd cleared out her Nanox supply after the _Nemesis_ had come back from the last job, and there was nothing in the room for Henry to find. Which raised the question: what was taking so long? Alex keyed the door open and stepped inside to find Henry sitting on the edge of her bed, his old crumpled uniform jacket lying across his lap.

Henry looked up when Alex came in. "I didn't know you kept this," he nodded at the jacket. "There're still buttons in the hidden pocket."

"There's a hidden pocket?" Alex raised an eyebrow.

Henry flipped the jacket over and reached into the right breast pocket. He slid his fingers into the side panel of the pocket and tugged. The cloth came away from the jacket, revealing a hidden compartment holding three buttons and a folded up piece of fabric.

Alex sat beside Henry, taking the fabric from his hand. "I'd wondered where this was," she rubbed her fingers over Henry's name embroidered into the narrow strip. "You took it off before you came after me."

"And you kept the jacket."

"Yeah, well," Alex shrugged. "Call me sentimental."

Henry grinned. "I always knew you were a softie. You probably sleep with it, too."

"Shut up," Alex told him, reaching for the jacket, trying very hard not to think of the nights when she'd wrapped herself up in the jacket, shivering through the crash after another bender. "Did you find anything?"

"You know I didn't," Henry said, moving the jacket out of Alex's reach. "One might assume that you've just hidden it very well. Somewhere else on the ship perhaps?"

"Is that the assumption you're making?"

"I trust you," he told her, raising the jacket to his nose and sniffing it. "You _do_ sleep with it," he grinned. "It smells like you."

"Give me that," she tried to grab the jacket and Henry moved it out of her reach. Alex ended up climbing over him to get at it, but he tossed the jacket off to the side and pulled Alex into his lap.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning closer. "I guess I'll have the real you to curl up with, I don't need to bother with the jacket anymore."

"Is that why I'm here? So you don't have to sleep alone?" Henry pulled back a bit. "Why am I here, Alex?"

"You're helping to keep me sane while I go on a months-long job with nobody but my crew for company?" Alex swooped in for a kiss.

"I'm serious," Henry ducked his head and Alex ended up kissing his cheek instead. "Why'd you ask me to come?"

"Because while I really appreciate what you've done for me in the last month, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm cured just because I've been detoxing for a month. And I need you with me, to keep me on the straight and narrow." Alex leaned back far enough to look into Henry's face. His expression was unreadable, and she frowned. "What? What is it?"

"Nothing," Henry shook his head, brushing her hair out of her face. "Now, where were we?" He slid his hands into her hair and pulled her into a kiss.

Alex shifted in his lap until she was straddling him, and pushed him down onto the bed. Leaning over him, she started to undo the buttons on his jacket, following each button with a kiss. On the last kiss, Henry caught her lip between his teeth and tugged. The sudden sting made her collapse on top of Henry, clinging to him. One of his hands was still in her hair, and he flipped them over, tugging on Alex's hair until she went soft and pliant under him, practically purring as she bared her neck. Henry leaned down to kiss her neck, dragging his teeth over her collarbone, and Alex moaned, wriggling underneath him.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, then lifted her head to look at him, frowning.

"You're overdressed," she said. "We're both overdressed. We need to fix that, right now." She pushed at Henry's chest until he sat up, straddling her legs. Alex tugged at his jacket impatiently, and Henry had barely shrugged out of it before she threw it off the bed. They undressed as well as they could without pulling apart completely, rolling back and forth on the bed. Alex was the first to get undressed, and she crawled backward off Henry's lap, reaching for the belt on Henry's pants as she went.

Just then, the door slid open and Titus barged in, not looking up from the dataflex sheet he was reading.

"Captain, we're ready for departure, Teri's waiting for you on the bri—" He trailed off as he looked up, gawking at Alex, who was frozen where she sat, hands clenched on Henry's belt.

"Titus, what the fuck," she grated out, looking around for something to cover up with. The sheets weren't an option, since they were both lying on top of them, and she'd thrown all their clothes onto the floor.

"Hey," Henry raised himself up on his elbows, glaring at Titus. "Take a picture, it'll last longer." He twisted and rolled, tugging the sheets out from under himself and handing the corner he'd liberated to Alex. She held it up to her chest, but it wasn't enough to cover more than her chest.

Titus' eyes narrowed and he swept his gaze over Alex, smiling lazily. "Oh, that's all right, Henry. I've seen it before."

Alex spoke through gritted teeth, barely getting the words out. "Get. The fuck. Out."

"Teri's waiting for you on the bridge," Titus told her breezily, backing away toward the door. "We're ready to go, whenever you are, _Captain_." With that, he was gone, and Alex briefly considered between going after him, naked or not, and punching him in the face. Instead, she let the sheet drop from her chest and collapsed onto the bed, rolling off Henry to lie beside him.

"Bad timing, thy name is Titus Casey," she groaned. "Can we pick this up later? Like it or not, he's got a point."

"You could just let Teri run the show," Henry said. He rolled onto his side, propped up on one elbow, running the fingers of his other hand over Alex's stomach, feather light touches that slowly drifted lower and lower.

"I can't," Alex said, catching his hand with hers. She took a deep shaky breath and let it out, then sat up.

"You know what I said earlier about Titus hating me?" Henry sat up with her, reaching for the clothes scattered on his side of the bed. "I think I hate him, too." He held out her shirt and panties, then sat back to watch her get dressed.

"You're not the only one," Alex grumbled. "I swear, if he keeps this up, I'll throw him out of the airlock." She zipped up her top and looked up at Henry. "How do I look?"

"If looks could kill..." Henry laughed. "Do you mind if I just stay here while you go fly the ship?"

"Be my guest," Alex shrugged. "Your room is across the hall, if you wanna get settled in. This shouldn't take long, I'll be back soon, and we can pick up where we were so rudely interrupted."

"I'm looking forward to it," Henry gave her a smile.

#

Once they got out of Eurydice Station and out into open space, the days on the _Nemesis_ all bled into one another. Henry knew Titus tried very hard to keep out of his way, for everyone's sake, but with a ship as small as the _Nemesis_ , there were only so many places he could go. Henry wasn't overly concerned with how Titus felt about him, but did his best to reciprocate and stay out of Titus' way as much as he could.

The day they were due to cross the boundary of the Outer Systems and go out of reach of regular communications, Henry received a message. It arrived from an automated relay station, and when he saw the path it had taken to get to him, he frowned. It had been a long time since anyone had accessed his file, and even longer since anyone had accessed the classified version of the file, the one that listed all the details of his service.

Henry kept reading, and when he got to the end of the message, he frowned. He hadn't expected anyone on the _Nemesis_ to have the kind of contacts required to access his file, and yet the trace program the file had been tagged with clearly pointed to the ship being the destination of the data packet. He leaned back in his chair and tried to decide what to do next.

#

_Alex waits until the door closes behind her before letting out her breath and slumping against the wall. Standing at attention for the duration of the hearing has left her shaking, and she hates feeling this weak. She hears someone approach and looks up, smiling in spite of herself when she sees Henry coming towards her carrying two cups of coffee._

_"How'd it go?"_

_"About as well as I expected," Alex takes the cup and sits down on a nearby bench. "Because you killed Tommy, and because of the stuff we brought back with us, they're not bringing the hammer down on me all the way."_

_"What does that mean?"_

_"I don't know. They haven't decided what they're going to do with me yet." Alex takes a sip of coffee and turns to Henry. "How'd yours go?"_

_Henry shrugs._

_"When do you find out what they've decided?"_

_"They'll let us know sometime tonight," Henry says. "We've got quarters assigned, we're supposed to stay on the base."_

_"You wanna have dinner? Maybe some drinks?"_

_"Sounds like a plan," Henry gets to his feet and holds his hand out to Alex. "Come on, let's get out of here."_

_An hour later, their half-eaten food is getting cold on the table, and they've made serious inroads into the bottle of whiskey Henry brought with him. Alex leans towards Henry, shifting against the couch cushions._

_"Have I thanked you for saving my life yet?" There are mere inches between them now, and Henry closes the distance, wrapping a hand around the back of her head and pulling her into a kiss._

_"You don't have to thank me," he says eventually._

_"I do," she says. "You risked everything for me, including possibly your career."_

_"I'd do it all over again," he says, pulling her into his lap and kissing her again. "I wouldn't change a thing."_

_They don't talk for a while after that, and it's only the lack of space on the couch that makes them pull apart. Henry gets to his feet and reaches for Alex, pulling her with him toward the bedroom, when the comm chirps annoyingly. Alex crosses the room to the comm console and enters her personal code in. It's not a call, just a formal message detailing the tribunal's decision._

_"They're reassigning me to Ischeria. There's a new intelligence outpost there, and they need experienced staff. It comes with a demotion and a black mark, but at least there's no prison time, and I get to keep my job."_

_Henry comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her. "Are you going to take it?"_

_"I don't really have a choice," Alex shakes her head, tilting her head to the side when he nuzzles her neck. "You want to check yours?"_

_Henry reaches around her and enters his personal code. The message is brief, just like Alex's._

_"Prison time?" Alex glares at the display. "What the hell for?"_

_"They don't like it when people disobey orders," he says. "And apparently saving your life wasn't enough to keep me out of jail."_

_"I'm sorry," Alex says, turning back to the display. "At least it's only six months."_

_"Yeah, but then they're shipping me off to Niflhel, and I don't like the cold."_

_"You'll get reassigned," Alex tells him, turning to face him. "Someone with your skills, they'd be stupid not to put you back in the field."_

_Henry shrugs. "I'll get stuck with a desk job somewhere anyway."_

_"What? Why?"_

_Henry lifts his hand and turns his head, pulling his hair out of the way to show Alex the jagged scar. "It's a good thing the transport ship we caught a ride on didn't have a jump drive. I'd have been dead otherwise."_

_"Oh," Alex says, cupping his cheek with her hand. "I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm really sorry._

_"Stop," Henry tells her, covering her hand with his. "It's not your fault."_

_"Yes, it is. If I hadn't been so stupid, I'd have seen through Tommy's act and I wouldn't have—"_

_"Stop," Henry repeats, putting a finger on her lips. "It's done and over with. We're here, we might as well make the best of the time we've got left."_

_"That sounds like a plan," Alex says, moving in to kiss him. They barely break apart as they make their way to the bedroom, leaving a trail of scattered clothes behind them._

_Later, Henry runs his fingers through Alex's hair. "I've got an idea," he says._

_"Hmm?" Alex's head is pillowed on his chest, and she doesn't bother moving._

_"I've got another option, besides prison and reassignment."_

_"What are you talking about?" Alex pushes herself off Henry's chest and sits up. "What else is there?" She pauses, putting it together. "Oh."_

_"Yeah," Henry laughs, pulling her back down. "Compared to Niflhel and riding a desk, a discharge doesn't really seem like a bad thing." He rolls them over so that he's looking down at her, suddenly serious. "Come with me," he says._

_"What?"_

_"Run away with me," he repeats, staring down at her._

_Alex is silent for a long time, until Henry starts to roll away from her, and then she reaches up for him. "Yeah, okay."_

_"Okay?"_

_"Yeah," Alex grins up at him. "What the hell, let's do it."_

_Henry grins back and moves in for a kiss._

#

Later, when he sat in the mess hall, eating breakfast with Alex, he wondered if he should tell her that one of her crew was checking up on him. She was the only person he was sure wasn't the recipient of the file—she knew all there was to know about him, after all.

Alex leaned forward, her forehead touching his, and adjusted the collar of the jacket he'd insisted on being allowed to wear—it was his, after all, Alex's argument that he'd given it to her and therefore relinquished ownership notwithstanding. When Alex pulled back and looked to the side, Henry turned as well, to watch Titus cross the room, glaring at him.

"Did you need something, Titus?" Alex looked up at him, and in spite of himself, Henry moved to sit closer to Alex, draping his arm over her shoulders. Alex sat sprawled in a loose-limbed way that made it clear she'd spent a very good night in very good company, and Henry smirked at the way Titus blinked at them.

"No," Titus shook his head, looking away as Henry reached around to tuck a strand of Alex's hair behind her ear. "I'm just... distracted."

"You're heading up to the bridge?" Alex leaned her head on Henry's shoulder, smiling lazily.

"I am," Titus nodded. Henry almost felt sorry for him, and being stuck in such an awkward situation.

"Who's got the bridge right now?"

"Dirk's on duty right now," Titus said, looking grateful for the distraction of a subject change. "Oliver is coming up for a shift with me as well." Titus finally reached the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. "If that's everything, Captain?"

"Yeah, no, go ahead," Alex waved him away. "I'll see you later."

After Titus fled, they finished their coffee and breakfast, and Alex got to her feet, stretching. "I guess I should get to work."

Henry took her hand and pulled her back toward the seat. "You're the captain. You're allowed to take a day off."

"Not on this ship," Alex laughed. "I'd never hear the end of it." She leaned down to kiss him, but pulled back before the kiss could grow more heated. "What are you going to do with your day?"

"Is there anything you need me to do?"

Alex shook her head. "There's not much for anyone to do on a trip like this." She frowned. "You must be getting pretty bored, aren't you?"

"So far, you've kept me plenty entertained," Henry said, giving Alex his best leer. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

"OK, but if you get bored..."

"I'll come and find you."

"Good," Alex leaned in for one more kiss. "I'm gonna go do some work now."

She left the mess hall, leaving Henry to wonder if he should have told her about someone on the ship checking his file. It was probably for the best that he hadn't. Things were tense enough as they were, without him adding fuel to the fire.

#

Alex was going over the materials Carrow had sent her when her door chimed. She tidied the dataflexis on her desk and opened the door.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?" Dirk came into the room, sitting down before she could invite him to do so.

"What's going on?"

"I wanted to check on you, see how you were doing."

"I'm OK," Alex said, then shook her head. "OK, no, I'm not. But I'm managing."

"I'd like you to come down to medical in the next couple of days, I want to run some tests."

"Have you heard from your contacts?" Alex hated how hopeful she sounded, setting herself up for a disappointment.

"When we get back, I'll have a fresh dose of nanites for you," Dirk told her, smiling. "I managed to pull some strings, get a shipment lost," he made air quotes around the word, "and redirected to Eurydice. I was hoping to get it before we left, sorry."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for," Alex told him, grinning like a fool. "I feel good enough for now, I can wait that long."

"You look good, too," Dirk told her. "The time off you took was good for you."

"Yeah," Alex nodded.

"OK, I'm beat," Dirk yawned, and got to his feet. "I'm going to bed. Have a good day."

"Yeah, you too," Alex nodded absently, turning back to the dataflexis already. "Thank you, Dirk," she added, looking up. "I really appreciate all you've done."

"It's my job to look out for your well being, Alex," he told her. "Just like it's my job to look out for everyone else's well being," he said, turning back from the door. "You should talk to Titus, get him to lighten up a bit. He bit my head off this morning at shift change."

"What happened?"

"He's been wound tighter than usual since we left Eurydice. He's trying to bury himself in work, making up new security regulations and so on, but we both know it's not going to work, not until he has it out with Henry."

"I don't want him to have it out with Henry," Alex shook her head. "There's nothing for him to _have_ out with Henry. I don't understand it; I thought I cleared the air with him. Where's all of this coming from?"

"You should talk to him," Dirk told her, heading for the door again.

"What the hell am I supposed to tell him?"

"I don't know," Dirk shrugged. "Tell him to spend more time with Oliver, get laid some more. That always relaxes me," he grinned, then looked Alex up and down. "It doesn't seem to be disagreeing with you, either."

"Get out," Alex told him, glaring.

"Yes, ma'am," Dirk saluted her, snapping his heels together. "Good luck, captain."

"Yeah, yeah," Alex grumbled. "Thanks for nothing."

Alex spent the next hour going over the data, staring at the dataflexis until the words started to blur before her eyes. Sighing, she got up and tried pacing in the small office, but there just wasn't enough room. She headed outside and started walking. Before she knew it, she was at the door to the bridge. She decided to go in and check on their progress, and opened the door, stepping inside.

Titus and Oliver were bent over a console, reading something intently enough that they didn't hear her come in.

"Titus, what is this?" Oliver asked, his voice tinged with alarm.

"I wanted to find out more about our new shipmate," Titus said. "So I got my... contacts to get me his file."

Alex almost stormed over to his chair, but managed to control her impulses, and stayed where she was, listening to more of the conversation.

"Titus, these are classified!" Oliver leaned over the console again. "You could get in serious trouble for having them!"

"I know that, but look at it! Look at what he's done!" Titus flailed his hand at the display. "He's dangerous!"

"The captain knows what she's doing, Titus," Oliver squeezed his shoulder. "She's known him for years, you should give her some credit."

"She's not thinking clearly right now," Titus grumbled. "Especially not where _he_ 's concerned."

"What are you talking about?"

"I shouldn't be telling you this," Titus said, not meeting Oliver's eyes. "She's a Nanoximal addict, and she's trying to get clean."

"And? What's your point?"

"My point is—" Titus looked up at Oliver, eyes wide. "Wait, you know?"

"That the captain is a Nanox addict? Everyone knows, Titus."

Titus slumped in the chair. "Everyone but me, apparently."

Oliver leaned forward, putting his hands on Titus legs. "Let it go, Titus. He's helping her get clean. You've seen for yourself how much better she looked when we came back from the last job. He's good for her."

"How can you say that? You've read the files, you know what he's done!"

"Maybe you should consider what's _not_ in the files," Alex said quietly from where she was standing by the door. She crossed to the console, pulled Titus out of his seat without a word, and closed the file, wiping it from the computer. "I'm not going to ask where you got this, but I don't ever want to hear you talking about it again."

"Captain, I—" Titus started, and Alex held up a hand.

"You crossed a line," Alex said. "Henry Priest is _my_ guest aboard _my_ ship, and you _will_ act civil towards him, no matter what." She leaned close in to Titus, speaking almost directly in his ear, her voice whisper-quiet. "I'm going to assume that there are no more copies of these files anywhere. If there are, they will be gone by the end of the day. And if you think you can hide them from me, I'd like you to remember whose ship you're on. Am I making myself clear, Mister Casey?" She straightened up and took a step back from Titus, not breaking eye contact with him.

"Yes, Captain," Titus nodded.

"Good," Alex sat down in her chair. "Now get out of my sight."

Once Titus was gone, Alex leaned back in the chair, breathing deeply. She opened her fists—she hadn't even noticed clenching them in the first place—and watched the crescent shapes her nails left behind fade slowly. She knew she had to resolve the situation with Titus, before things escalated and someone did something they'd regret, but she had no idea how to go about handling it. Sighing, she straightened up, and turned to Oliver, who was sitting at his station.

"Mister Hall, if you'd be so good as to report on our present position and course."

Oliver gave her a brief grateful look, then cleared his throat, bringing a star chart up on the main display. Alex put the thoughts of Henry and Titus out of her head and focused on her job.

#

The invitation to the card game came as somewhat of a surprise, but since Titus had actually taken Alex's orders to be civil to heart, Henry decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. He looked in on Alex before heading to the game, and found her sitting on her bed, holding the black lacquer box in her lap, staring down at the vials inside. When Henry sat down beside her, she leaned her head on his shoulder, sighing.

"I hate this," she said, glaring accusingly at the box.

"I know," Henry told her. "You're making progress, though; you need to stick with it."

"I know that," Alex lifted her head up off Henry's shoulder and set the box aside. "I'm not going to give up, you don't have to worry."

"Yeah, I do," Henry said. "I always worry about you."

"What have you got planned for tonight?" Alex changed the subject, looking away from Henry.

"Titus invited me to join the card game with the rest of the guys."

"Are you serious?" Alex burst out laughing, pulling Henry down to lie on the bed with her.

"What?" Henry gave her a puzzled look.

"You have no idea what you're in for, do you? I really wish I could be there to see your face when you see it." Alex grinned. "I take it you and Titus are getting along, then?" She pillowed her head on his chest.

"For the most part, we are," Henry said, running his fingers through Alex's hair. "I think that's mostly due to me staying out of his way."

"You don't have to do that. You're my... guest, and he has to get over whatever his issues with you are."

"I'm just trying to make things on board go smoothly," Henry told her. "This is going to be a long trip, it won't help anyone if we're at each others' throats."

"Don't let him get to you," Alex said, turning towards him. She leaned over Henry to kiss him, and squeaked when Henry rolled them over.

"In the interest of everyone getting along," Henry said, pinning Alex's wrists at her sides, "I think I should go join the card game."

"I think you should stay here," Alex arched her back under him and grinned. "I'm the captain, I can find something for them to do, make them have to cancel the game?" She managed to get one of her hands free and slid it under Henry's shirt, running her nails over his chest. "What do you say?"

"Alex," Henry caught her arm, pulling her hand out form under his shirt. "Stop."

"Fine," Alex slumped back on the bed, letting her hand fall by her side. "Go, have fun." She waved her hand in the direction of the door. "You can tell me all about the sausagefest tomorrow."

Henry rolled off to the side, and sat up on the edge of the bed. "All right, but if they make me promise not to tell, I won't break my oath." He ducked the pillow Alex swung at him and leaned in for a quick kiss. "Do you want me to come see you when we're done?"

"If it goes the way it usually does, you'll be there all night," Alex said. "But feel free to come by anyway. It'd be nice to wake up next to you."

"I'll see how things go," Henry said, getting to his feet. "Do you need anything before I go?"

"Nah," Alex waved him off. "Go ahead, have fun, don't hurt anyone too much."

Henry headed toward the mess from Alex's quarters, and stopped in his tracks when he saw the sign on the door to the mess hall. It could only have been Dirk's idea, the brightly painted letters painted on a piece of scrap metal bolted to the door announcing _COCK OR GTFO_. Henry raised an eyebrow, gave a brief moment's thought to going back to take Alex up on her offer, and then knocked on the door. It slid open part way, then Dirk's face appeared in the gap.

"What's the password?" Henry stared at him blankly, and Dirk grinned. "If you don't know the password, you have to prove you're eligible to enter." He pointed at the sign.

Henry frowned. "I'm not showing you my cock."

Dirk shook his head. "It's the rules. Password, or cock."

Henry leaned forward until their faces were mere inches apart. "I can kill you in you sleep?"

Dirk blanched, and the door slid open all the way. "Good enough. Come on in!" As Henry went in past him, he saw that Dirk wasn't wearing any pants and sighed quietly. It was going to be a long night.

Henry suspected Titus' main motive for including him in the game was to try and win some of the share of the profits that Alex had promised him for the job, and his suspicions were proven correct when Titus suggested they play for higher stakes. Still, Henry had played and won against better card players than Titus could ever hope to be, so he accepted the invitation.

Once the higher bets had been placed, the rowdy party atmosphere quieted down and everyone focused on their cards. At first, everyone won a hand or two, and then Henry raked in his first big win, followed by another two. Oliver laid down his cards and pushed his chair away from the table.

"That's it for me, guys," he said. "I'd like to have _some_ money left when we're done with this job."

"Aw, come on," Dirk said just as Ash called out "No helping Titus!"

"Hey!" Titus protested. "I don't need any help, I'm doing just fine by myself, thank you very much."

Henry smiled a little. "You looking to win back some of what you've lost?"

"Bring it," Titus glared at him. "I've been going easy on you, anyway."

Henry raised an eyebrow and ignored Dirk and Ash's hooting as he dealt the cards. Once they started, he raised the bid ruthlessly, until Ash folded, throwing down his cards.

"This is getting too rich for me," he said, glancing at Henry's substantial winnings. "Not all of us are sleeping with the captain, some of us actually have to work to get paid."

Henry gave him a level stare. "I'm the one who brought you the job. You wouldn't even be getting paid if it wasn't for me."

"Leave him alone, Ash," Dirk told him. "You're just jealous that you're the only one in the room who _hasn't_ slept with the captain."

"Can we get back to the game, please?" Titus called out, raising his voice. "In case it escaped your attention, I was just about to win the hand." He laid down his cards with a flourish. "Thank you, thank you, and thank _you_ ," he said, reaching for the money in front of Henry.

"Not so fast," Henry told him, laying down his cards. For all that Titus' hands was one of the best and hardest to get in the game, Henry had him beat. Titus deflated, sitting back in his chair, staring at the lowly pile of credits in front of him.

"Well played," he said, giving Henry a nod. "Looks like it's just you and Dirk, then."

"Uh-uh," Dirk shook his head. "I'm going to take this as a hint and quit while I still have money left."

"This calls for a celebratory drink," Ash called out, opening a cupboard. "And seeing as tonight is a special night, what with us initiating a new member of the club..." He had to reach far into the back to pull out the bottle, but when he made his way back to the table, holding the bottle over his head, Titus gave a low whistle. Ash was holding a bottle of Valhalla brandy, and judging by the bottle's appearance, it was a very old bottle of Valhalla brandy.

"I didn't know they still made this stuff."

"They don't," Ash set the bottle on the table and turned a chair backwards before straddling it. "This is a very special bottle. You should consider yourself lucky. All of us came on board at the same time, and we set up this little club together, so we've each only had a shot."

"Give it here," Dirk took the bottle from Ash. "As club president, I get to do the honors."

The cork came free of the bottle with a pop that echoed loudly in Henry's ears. Once the bottle was open, the sharp scent of it reached him even from across the table. He took a deep breath, imagining he could feel the Valhalla-vapor burning its way down his throat. Taking his eyes off the bottle, he swept up his winnings, stuffing them into his jacket pockets.

"Come on, man, have a taste," Ash nudged him, holding the bottle out.

Henry took the bottle from Ash, his hand shaking only slightly before he wrapped his fingers around its neck. This close up, the scent of the Valhalla was intoxicating, and Henry closed his eyes, swallowing tightly. It was a long moment before he opened his eyes and lowered the bottle to the table.

"I appreciate the gesture," he said, pushing the bottle toward Titus. "But I can't."

"What the hell, man?" Titus took the bottle from him, staring at it.

"I don't..." Henry started, and Titus slammed his hand down on the table.

"Unbelievable! You don't mind taking our money, but you're too good to drink with us? What the fuck?"

"Titus," Oliver reached out for Titus. "Stop."

"No!" Titus shook off Oliver's hand. "Fuck this shit. Take a fucking drink, Henry. Be a man. I've gone out of my way to be civil, it's the least you can do to try the same."

Henry stood up, glancing at the bottle. He gripped the edge of the table and shook his head. "I can't."

"Fuck you, then," Titus snatched up the bottle and took several deep gulps, ignoring Dirk's yelp of protest. A trickle of the gold-colored liquid ran down his chin and onto his neck. Henry forced himself to look away from the drop staining Titus' skin and back away from the table. Titus slammed the bottle down and turned on him, eyes blazing and fists clenched. "This isn't over."

Oliver grabbed Titus' arm, pulling him back from the table as Henry turned and walked toward the door. Behind him, he could hear Oliver whispering frantically to Titus. Henry heard the words "file" and "alcoholic," and paused for a moment. He hadn't expected Oliver to be the one to run the check on him—all he'd known was that someone had run a check on him, and with Titus' recent behavior, he'd been the logical assumption.

"Shit," Titus muttered behind him. "Hey, wait—"

Henry didn't wait. He let the door slide shut behind him and kept walking down the corridor, straight to his quarters. He made a pot of coffee, drinking the first cup as soon as it was ready, trying to wash the phantom taste of the Valhalla from his mouth. It wasn't enough, and neither was the second. He stopped halfway through the third cup, giving up. He lit a cigarette instead, and sat down on his bed, picking up the library dataflex he'd brought with him. Scrolling through the text, he lost track of time, absorbed in the story, until the ashed remains of his cigarette fell on his fingers. Hissing, he dropped the dataflex, and stubbed out the butt of the cigarette in his ashtray, sucking on the burned knuckles of his other hand.

He was rinsing his hand under the faucet of the small sink built into the wall across from the bed when the door chimed. Henry waved his hand over the console that opened the door and kept running water over his fingers. He felt Alex's arms wrap around him a moment before she pressed up against him, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Hi," she said, rubbing her cheek against his shirt.

Henry turned off the water, hit the button that folded the sink back into the wall, and turned around to face Alex.

"Hi," he said. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."

"The Xocet gives me weird dreams," Alex said, stepping back from him. She wore a silk robe, tied loosely at the waist and gaping just enough that Henry could see she wasn't wearing anything underneath. Alex hooked her fingers into his belt loops and pulled him away from the wall. "I figured I'd come over and see if you were back. And here you are." She pulled him towards her and reached for his belt, unbuckling it.

Henry grabbed her hands, pulling them away from his pants. "Alex. It's late."

"That never stopped you before," she giggled. "Besides, looks to me like you're wide awake with nowhere to go," she said with a glance at the empty coffee pot. She put a hand on Henry 's chest and pushed him backward until his thighs hit the bed, and he had nowhere to go but onto the bed. Alex followed him up, straddling his legs, and reached for his pants. Before Henry could react, she had them open and crawled backward, pulling the pants with her. Tossing them off the side of the bed, Alex pulled the ties on her robe open and pulled it off, then crawled back up until she was kneeling over Henry, her face level with his.

"They're going to tell stories about us someday," she whispered, staring down at him. "You and me, spanning years and planets. Lives ruined and blood shed." She leaned down to kiss him, catching his lower lip in her teeth. "Epic, that's what we are. Epic." She ground in his lap, and Henry groaned, reaching for her waist, trying to lift her off him as he sat up.

He managed to get out "Alex, please," before Alex shifted position, wrapping her legs around his waist, settling herself more solidly in his lap.

"Please what?" She asked, sliding her hands under his shirt, pushing the shirt up and over his head. When she tossed the shirt over her shoulder, Henry caught her wrists, squeezing them to make her pay attention.

"You're high," he said, ignoring the way she wriggled in his lap. "We shouldn't be doing this. Not right now, not like this."

"So, what," she pouted, "you only want me when I'm sober?" She yanked her hands out of his and climbed off him, and off the bed. "Thanks a lot."

Henry frowned. "That's not true, and you know it. But you're not sober, and you're not yourself."

"Oh, fuck you," Alex snapped, picking up her robe and putting it on. "You think you're better than me, because you managed to get clean and I didn't?"

Henry got to his feet on the opposite side of the bed, glaring at her. He was around the bed and next to Alex before he realized he was moving. "If I hadn't, I'd be dead by now," he pushed against her until she took a step back, then another and another, until the wall was against her back and there was nowhere left for her to go. "And then where would you be?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he saw her face fall, and he wished he could take the words back. "Oh, hell," he muttered, and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her against him, bringing their lips together in a kiss that quickly grew heated.

Henry broke the kiss, yanked Alex's robe off her shoulders, and sent it fluttering to the floor before turning back to Alex and crowding her against the wall again. He threaded his fingers in her hair, tugging a little until Alex went pliant against him, her head lolling back. Henry kissed her again, rougher than before, biting at her lips before moving his mouth down to her neck. He slid one hand from her hair, palming at her breast and scratching his nails over her ribs and hip, then sliding two fingers through the wetness between her legs. Alex bucked against his hand, and Henry could feel her groan vibrating against his lips where they were pressed to her throat. He pressed against her, forcing her legs apart, and she lifted one of her legs, propping her foot up on the chair.

"Yeah, Henry, come on," she urged, and he moved his other hand from her hair, clapping it over her mouth as he bit down on her neck.

"Be quiet," he told her, moving his fingers between her legs and sliding them into her. Alex keened against his hand, tongue sliding over his palm, and Henry pressed the heel of his other hand against her clit as he moved his fingers inside her. Alex clawed at his shoulders and rocked against his hand, her hips stuttering as Henry changed the speed and motion.

Alex slid one of her hands between them, wrapping her fingers around his cock, and Henry's fingers spasmed inside her as he thrust into her hand. Alex groaned and bit down on his fingers, and Henry grunted, then pulled back, sliding his fingers out of her, leaving her whimpering. He licked at the red imprint of his fingers on her cheek and lifted the leg she'd propped up one the chair up to his waist. Alex took the hint and wrapped the leg around him as he pushed inside her. He wasn't gentle, and he wasn't careful, and that suited them both just fine. His fingers dug into her hips where he held her pressed against the wall, and he bit down on the same spot on her neck as before.

Alex was making more noise now, moaning as she matched his thrusts, and Henry lifted his head from her neck. "I said be quiet," he grunted into her ear, thrusting into her with short, fast strokes. He pressed his hand over her mouth again, and when her tongue snaked out and slid over his fingers, he let her suck them into her mouth, sliding them in and, mirroring the thrusts of his cock. When Alex's head lolled back against the wall, he slid his fingers out of her mouth and pressed them against her clit, twisting them just the right way as he fucked her against the wall, and then Alex was arching into him, clenching down on him, mouth open in a soundless O, clawing at the wall above her head, trying to find a handhold. It only took a few more thrusts and he was coming, burying his face in the crook of her neck, biting down hard enough that he tasted blood.

When Henry pulled back from Alex, grimacing at the trickle of blood running down from her neck and onto her chest, she grinned lazily at him before sliding down to the floor. Henry pulled out the sink to wet a towel, and bent down to clean the bite on her shoulder. Alex made a quiet noise when he pressed the towel down, but tilted her head to the side to give him more access. When he was done cleaning up the blood, he held out a hand to her. Alex took his hand and rose to her feet, stumbling against Henry. He caught her with a hand on her hip, steadying her, and guided her to the bed. Alex sat down and kept hold of Henry's hand, pulling him towards her, and he tumbled onto the bed with her. Alex wrapped herself around him, pillowing her head on his chest. Henry pulled the blanket up over them and ran his fingers through Alex's hair, listening to her breathing grow softer and more even as he fell asleep.

#

Alex woke up alone, but even without opening her eyes, she knew she wasn't in her own bed. She had a brief moment of wondering what exactly she'd done the night before, and then it all flooded back. Pulling the blanket over her head, she made a mental note to stop getting into situations she'd end up regretting come morning.

When the door slid open, she thought about pretending to be still asleep, and perhaps Henry would let her be. Maturity (and knowing Henry for several years) won out, and she lowered the blanket and opened her eyes.

Henry's back was turned to her, and Alex heard the clinking of cups and cutlery. When Henry turned to face her, she saw a tray, laden with coffee cups and plates of scrambled eggs on the desk behind him.

"Hi," he said, his voice quiet.

"Morning," she said, brushing her hair off her face. There was a pleasant soreness in her muscles, and she smiled as she stretched. When she sat up, wrapping the sheet around her chest, her shoulder twinged and she frowned, rubbing at the sore spot near her neck. It was still raw, but already healed a bit. Henry's eyes followed her hand and he frowned.

"That should be completely healed by now," he said.

"My nanites aren't as good as they used to be," Alex shrugged. "They'll take care of it, it'll just take a bit longer." There was a long uncomfortable silence, and Alex cleared her throat. "Listen," she said, "I'm sorry about last night." She looked up at Henry, who spoke the same words at the same time.

Henry stepped forward, holding up a hand before Alex could say anything.

"Wait, I need to say this first," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry I was an asshole to you."

"You weren't an asshole," Alex shook her head. "I'm the one who got high and showed up practically naked. Believe me, though, I knew what I was doing."

Henry laughed, an abrupt, choked sound, and Alex looked up at him. "Whatever you do," she said, stretching again and giving him a grin, "don't apologize for the angry wallsex. That was kinda awesome."

Henry gave her a look that made her want to throw back the blankets and pull him into bed with her again, but he got to his feet and turned to the desk.

"I brought breakfast," he picked up the tray and set it on the bed. "We should eat it before it gets cold."

Alex's eyes widened when she saw what was on the tray. "Is that...?" She reached out and poked at the contents of the plate. "Is that real bacon?" Henry held out a piece to her, and she ate it from his fingers. "Oh my god, where did you get this?"

"I have my connections," Henry waggled his eyebrows and held out another piece. He ended up feeding her most of the bacon, and Alex finally shook her head.

"You really do love me," she laughed, pointing at the plate. "No way you'd have given me your share of the bacon otherwise."

Henry stared at her, the piece of bacon forgotten in his hand. After an awkward moment's pause, he ate the bacon and licked his fingers clean. "So, you noticed. Took you long enough."

"Henry, I—" Alex started, then trailed off, unsure how to proceed. She was painfully aware that Henry was watching her intently and waiting for her to finish what she'd started saying. "I'm sorry," she finally said. "You deserve better than this. Than me."

"Oh," Henry's face fell, and Alex had no doubt that if they weren't in Henry's quarters, he'd have been heading for the door right about then.

"Wait, that's not—" Alex reached for him, taking his hand. "You've been there for me all these years, and you've saved me, over and over. You've seen my at my worst, and you've held my hair back when I puke, and you still love me after all the shit you've seen me go through."

"So, you _don't_ want me to hold back your hair when you puke?" Henry said, his lips twitching in a smile.

Alex laughed for a moment, then shook her head, her hair falling loosely around her face. "I don't know if I can give you what you want. Hell, I don't even know _what_ you want. I mean, what we have is nice, right? Friends with benefits, without too many complications?"

"Yeah," Henry said, his voice flat and without inflection. "Nice."

"See what I mean? I suck so badly at this," Alex let go of his hand and got up out of bed, picking up her bathrobe from where it had fallen the night before. "I bet you're wishing you hadn't come along."

Henry walked around the bed to her and caught her hand. "I'm not going anywhere, Alex."

"Of course not. You're stuck on this ship with me, out here in the middle of uncharted space. You can't exactly leave."

Henry let go of her hand, and turned back to the bed to pick up the tray. He spoke quietly, but Alex still heard him. "I wouldn't go anywhere even if I could leave."

Alex started to reach for him to pull him into a hug, but she never got there. A loud banging on the door to the cabin interrupted her. Frowning, Alex swiped her hand over the controls, and when the door opened to reveal Titus, hand raised to knock again, she glared.

"What do you want, Titus?"

He gaped at her, and Alex glanced down to notice her robe wasn't closed. She took pity on Titus and pulled it shut, tying the belt to hold it closed.

"Titus," she waved her hand in front of his face. "What do you want?"

"Uh, sorry, captain," he blinked rapidly, then looked up to meet her eyes. "We've found something. I tried calling you in your quarters, but you didn't answer, so I—"

"So you decided to come down here and find me yourself, rather than just calling Henry," Alex said, narrowing her eyes.

"Sorry?" Titus scratched his head and gave her a hopeful grin. "It was a late night yesterday..." He caught sight of Henry over Alex's shoulder and looked away quickly. "Anyway, we'll reach the... whatever it is in about half an hour, if you want to come up to the bridge."

"Thank you, Mister Casey," Alex told him, and shut the door his face. Turning back to Henry, she saw his lips pressed tightly together. "Why do I get the feeling it was more than just a late night? He didn't want to come down here at all." She went back to Henry, watching the thin line of his lips get even thinner. "What happened last night?"

"Nothing," Henry shook his head. "Just a misunderstanding."

Alex stared at Henry for a moment, then sighed. "All right, you don't have to tell me. As long as it doesn't interfere with the job, I don't care if you do get along." She retied her robe, tightening the belt. "Are you coming up to the bridge with me?"

Henry nodded. "I'd like that." His hands lingered on Alex's waist.

Alex leaned closer and gave him a kiss. "I'm gonna go take a shower and change, meet me up there in twenty minutes?"

#

The _Pathos Verdes_ was an enormous ship, dwarfing the _Nemesis_ as the smaller ship approached it. Oliver took them on a slow fly-by along the length of the _Pathos Verdes_ ' hull, and flicked on the exterior lights to illuminate the charred exterior of the larger ship.

"What the hell happened to it?" Teri breathed. "That doesn't look like any weapon scoring I've ever seen."

"The ship's a couple hundred years old," Alex said, coming onto the bridge, Henry coming in beside her. "It could have happened a long time ago."

"I'm seeing no breathable atmosphere inside," Ash looked up from his instruments. "Also, there's no gravity. Or power. It's going to be cold. We'll have to go in with environmental suits."

"Can you tell if the internal systems can be reactivated?" Alex sat in her chair, staring at the blackened hull of the _Pathos Verdes_ streaking past the viewscreen. "The job would go a lot faster if we could move about the ship unencumbered."

"I'm not getting any readings from the reactor," Ash said. "Not surprising, after all these years. I'll need to go in and check things on site, though, to be sure."

"We should keep the first team small," Titus said. "Just in case."

"Just in case what?" Dirk smirked at him. "The ship's been empty for a hundred and seventy five years, what could you possibly think is on board that we need to worry about?"

"No, the ship's been _missing_ for a hundred and seventy five years," Titus glared at Dirk. "Who knows what's on board?"

"There's no _air_ ," Dirk pointed out.

"They could have _suits_ ," Titus didn't back down.

"Hey!" Alex raised her voice. "You can argue about this later. Teri, life signs?"

"There are some, but they're very faint. I can't tell from here, but it could be their hydroponics, if they have any."

"I may be able to get a better idea from the inside," Ash spoke up.

"All right," Alex said. "For now, Titus and Ash will go. Grab your gear, gentlemen, and head down to the airlock. There's a present in there for you, Ash."

"Ooh, is it shiny?" Ash grinned wide, getting out of his chair.

"Probably not, but it'll let you talk to the big ship outside," Alex said. "Carrow acquired it a while back, and apparently it's a control module. Not specifically for this ship, but for an _Asterion_ -class ship. It should help. Oliver, find us a place to dock."

"Aye, captain," Oliver answered, fingers already moving deftly over the controls. He spun the _Nemesis_ , matching the larger ship's rotation, and moved them closer to an airlock close to the stern of the ship. "This is the best I can do," he called out, not looking away from the controls. "I'd have gotten you in amidships, but both the docking collars there are damaged."

"It's all right, Oliver. This will get them closer to engineering, anyway," Alex said. "Saves us having to listen to Ash whine about having to go too far in his suit." She grinned at Ash's yelp of protest.

"You want me to go with them?" Henry asked quietly, and she glanced up at him.

"Do you really want to be stuck on an abandoned ship with Titus?" Alex asked out of the corner of her mouth.

Henry grinned, and shrugged. "I'd be more useful there than here."

"All right, go," Alex waved him toward the door. "Just don't blame me if he tries to leave you behind or something."

"Don't worry," Henry gave her a brief kiss on the cheek before heading out. "I can take care of myself."

"It's not you I'm worried about," Alex called after him, and he waved his hand in the air in response. Alex sat back in her chair and sighed. "I hope I don't end up regretting this."

A slight jolt went through the ship as the _Nemesis_ docked with the _Pathos Verdes_. Alex opened the comm channels to the scouting party's individual suits and kept an eye on their life signs and video monitors. As they floated through the umbilical and approached the docking ring on the large ship, Henry took point, and Alex snickered at Titus' disgruntled grumbling over the comms. Once they opened the airlock and entered the _Pathos Verdes_ , though, Alex watched his heart rate slow down and his breathing even out as Titus shut up and focused on his job.

She looked up to find Oliver watching her intently and took pity on him. With a swipe of her fingers, she put the readings up on the main display. "You can keep an eye on him with me." Oliver's face lit up with a wide smile and he nodded his thanks. Out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw Teri shaking her head.

"What?"

"You're such a sap," Teri grinned.

"Don't you have work to do?" Alex glared at her.

"Nope. All done." Teri sat back in her chair, stretching her legs out in front of her. "I'm just gonna hang out here with you and watch the show," she motioned to the display.

#

"Captain, we've reached engineering," Ash called out, sweeping his portable light over the large heavy doors in front of him. "I think I can open it, give me a minute." He disengaged his magnetic boots, floated over to the control panel above the door and opened it, scanning the mechanism. "Yeah, this shouldn't be a problem," he muttered, and reached into the open panel. He did something with his hand, and then the door slid halfway open with a shudder. Ash squeezed through the opening without a word.

"Ash!" Titus yelled, pushing off the floor and floating up to follow Ash inside. "What the hell are you thinking? There could have been something in here!"

"There's not, as you can see," Ash said calmly, floating around the room, shining his light around. "What, you were expecting space zombies or something?" He'd almost finished the circuit of the room when something floated by his head, and he dropped his flashlight, screaming and batting at whatever it was. When he was satisfied it was gone and not about to try to eat his face, he turned to glare at Titus, who was doubled over with laughter.

"What the fuck are you laughing at, asshole?" He reached up to grab the flashlight, which had not gone far, just to the end of its tether.

Henry tapped him on the shoulder and Ash tried (and failed) not to yelp. Henry held up a small toy, wiggling it in Ash's face. Ash yanked it out of Henry's hands and held it up to the light. It was a stuffed animal, something with rabbit ears and tentacles instead of arms and legs. The head was stitched onto the tentacles, the thick black thread standing out against the lighter material of the head.

"What the..." Ash tossed the toy away, and it floated past his head and over to Henry, who grabbed it out of the air and stuck it in his belt. Ash didn't bother asking why, and turned to the main console in the center of the room.

"I'm going to check what shape the systems are in. Let's see if I can get some lights on in here." There was a slot in the center of the console, and the control module fit perfectly into it. As soon as it was in, the console lit up, the displays shining brightly enough to break through the layers of dust and ice accumulated on it.

"I'm going to go look around farther into the ship," Alex motioned toward the corridor outside the door they'd come through.

"Titus, stay where you are," Alex's voice rang out over the comms. "No splitting up, at least until some of the systems are restored."

Titus frowned. "Fine," he groaned. "You never let me have any fun."

"The ship is huge, Titus, I'm sure you'll get plenty of time to run around and get into all sorts of trouble," Alex assured him.

Ash swept a hand over the console to clear it, slid the control module into a slot in the center, and keyed in a sequence. "Let's see if this works." He hit another button, and the lights in the room flickered on. "Captain? Mind telling us if the lights are coming on elsewhere in the ship?"

"Looks like it," Alex said. "Good job."

"It's what I do," Ash shrugged. "Get yourselves closer to the floor," he said to Henry and Titus. "I'm going to see if I can get the gravity back online." His fingers flew over the keys and as his tethered flashlight began to drop, he grabbed onto the edge of the console and landed gently on the floor when the gravity kicked in. Titus' slow descent meant he covered the last three feet in a matter of seconds, landing on the floor in a heap.

"Thanks for that," he grumbled, picking himself up.

"You had plenty of warning," Ash shrugged. "Not my fault you were too slow."

"Gentlemen, can we focus, please?" Alex chided them over the comms. "We've got power, and we've got gravity. How about life support, Ash?"

"That's going to take some time, captain," he shook his head, scanning the displays in front of him. "I'm showing hull breaches in several places, and the automated systems aren't kicking in to cut those areas off from the rest of the ship." He turned to another display, frowning at the systems outlined in red. "I can turn the life support back on, but with the breaches, we'll just lose what it recirculates."

"Can you get any better readings on those life signs? See if there's anyone on the ship who shouldn't be there?"

"Other than us, you mean?" Titus muttered under his breath, turning around and looking around the engine room. It was a perfectly ordinary engine room, the massive bulk of the reactor filling the middle of the room. Titus leaned back to look up, but the upper levels of the room were still dark, and he couldn't see the top of the engine.

"Captain, I'm still only getting faint life signs from whatever or whoever is here beside us," Ash said.

"Could something be interfering with the scan? Radiation from the reactor or something?"

Ash shook his head. "Negative that. The reactor's clean. It's mostly drained anyway. I can try and get it up and running, but that might be a bit tricky."

"Hey, wait a minute," Titus stopped him. "Shouldn't we make sure that this thing is safe before we turn it on?"

"It's fine, Titus," Ash rolled his eyes. "This thing is putting out less radiation than the power cell on your suit."

"Do what you can," Alex told Ash. "Then see if you can override the automated systems and seal off the damaged areas of the ship."

"Captain," Oliver's voice rang out over the comms, tinged with alarm. "The outer ring that's holding the umbilical is unstable. I'm going to have to move the ship, see if I can find a better spot to dock."

"All right," Alex said. "Hang tight, guys, we'll be right back."

"Oh, great," Titus muttered. "Now we're stuck here, with no way to leave."

"You expecting to have to leave in a hurry?" Henry asked.

Titus whirled on him. "It's my job to expect trouble," he said. "And I don't like not having a way out."

"Guys, will you relax?" Ash called out to them. When they turned to face him, he had brought up a schematic of the ship on the main display of the room. "Look at this," he pointed to an area amidships, near the top of the ship. "I think this is a docking bay. Captain," he spoke up, "can you see this?"

"Hang on, I'll put your video feed on the main display." There was a moment of silence, and Alex came back on the line. "We see it, Ash. Oliver's taking us there right now, we'll see if we can get in."

"From what I can tell, the damage in that part of the ship is minimal, and the systems are functioning normally," Ash said, glancing down at the console. "I've set it to let you in." He paused, crossing to another console and typing in a few commands. "And for my next trick, I've established a connection between the _Nemesis_ and the _Pathos Verdes_ ' computers."

"Great," Alex said. "Start making your way over here, and take a look around. We'll see you on board the _Nemesis_."

"See, Titus? The captain said you'd get a chance to run around," Ash patted Titus on the back.

"If you take out the control module, will that shut down the systems you've already booted up?" Henry asked, looking back at the console.

"It shouldn't," Ash shook his head. "It's like a key, once the lock's been opened, you can take out the key and it'll stay open."

"Good," Henry said. "I suggest taking it with us, just in case."

"Now who's paranoid?" Titus asked.

"Just taking a page from your book," Henry shrugged. "No harm in being cautious."

Ash pulled the control module from the console and slid it into a pocket in his suit. "Great, you guys finally agree on something. Can we go now?"

They left engineering behind, heading up the corridor towards the docking bay. Titus glanced around, eyeing the flickering lights along the walls.

"This place gives me the creeps," he said quietly.

"You and me both," Ash told him, catching up to walk beside Titus while Henry took point.

They reached a door leading off the corridor and paused in front of it. The panel on the side was glowing green, and Henry reached for it, then paused, turning back to Ash and Titus.

"I don't suppose either one of you brought a weapon?" When they both shook their heads, Henry gave Titus a look. "Seriously? You're a security chief, and you board a strange ship without a weapon?"

"I wasn't actually expecting to be doing any exploring," Titus sputtered. "If I'd known, I'd have brought Miranda."

"Oh, man, don't get him started," Ash groaned, as Henry raised an eyebrow.

"Miranda?"

Titus grinned. "She's my favorite."

Henry stared at him for a moment, then unzipped a pocket on his suit and took out two guns, handing one of them to Titus. He watched with approval as Titus checked the weapon over, then took a spot by Henry's side, motioning Henry toward the door.

"Hey, guys, are you sure this is a good idea?" Ash backed away from the door when Henry reached for the panel.

"You can stay here," Henry swept his hand over the corridor. "But since when are you afraid to explore new places?"

"I'm not afraid," Ash lifted his chin defiantly. "I'm just being cautious."

"We'll go first," Henry said, swiping his hand over the panel. As the door slid open, he brought up his gun and stepped inside, followed by Titus.

The lights in the room came on when the two men entered, and they stood in the doorway, staring at the contents of the room.

"Guys?" Ash called from the corridor. "What's going on, guys?"

"You can come in," Henry told him, holstering his gun. When Ash joined them, all three of them stared at the room for a while longer.

"What the everloving _fuck_ ," Ash said, gaping.

"Alex, what kind of ship did you say this was?" Henry spoke, his voice just barely calm.

"Some sort of research facility," Alex answered. "Why?"

"I think we just found something," Henry told her, turning around so his video feed would show her what he was looking at. "This place looks like a storage facility of some sort."

Opposite the door into the room was a window that took up most of the wall, showing them a view of a massive sphere-like room, its entire surface covered with what looked like mirrored tiles, in several different sizes.

"I think those are containers. There's some kind of retrieval mechanism here," Henry said, coming up to a console with a slot in the wall above it. The console was lit up, and Henry activated it with the push of a button. As they watched, a small drone flew out from under the cube of the room they were in and out towards the far wall. When it came back, it was carrying a container, which it deposited in the slot over the console. Henry opened the lid and took out the container, holding it up in front of his helmet cam.

"What the hell is that?" Titus asked. Henry turned the container around, looking at it from all sides.

"Is that some kind of... tiny squid?" Titus picked up the container, turning it this way and that, then nearly dropped it, yelping, when its contents shifted suddenly. One of the squid's tentacles had pressed against the wall of the container, its suckers sticking to the glass. "Holy fuck, is this thing alive?!"

"Aw, I think it likes you," Ash laughed.

"You're the one who screamed like a girl at a toy," Henry pointed out, and Ash flipped him off.

"Gentlemen, can we focus, please?" Alex was starting to sound annoyed.

"Ash, can you get a closer look at it?" Dirk said, and Ash bent closer to the jar.

"What is it, Dirk?"

"I've never seen anything like this," Dirk said. "Ash, I want you to take a look at the computers, see if there's any data you can retrieve."

Ash slid the command module into the console, his fingers flying over the keys. He stared at the display, shaking his head.

"I have no idea what any of this means." He looked to Titus and Henry. "Can either one of you make this out?"

"Never mind that," Dirk told him. Just leave the data unlocked, I'll take a look at it later." He paused. "You'll let me go on board, right, captain?"

"We'll see," Alex told him. "Get moving, guys. We're here for the data core, you're not going to find it there."

"Aye-aye, captain," Henry said with a grin. "Come on, you two, you heard the lady." He took the jar out of Ash's hands, set it on the console, and herded Ash and Titus toward the door.

The rest of the walk back to the docking bay passed uneventfully. They searched three more rooms, all of them perfectly ordinary living quarters with absolutely nothing to distinguish them. In the last one, Titus frowned, looking around the room, its floor littered with clothes and books and overturned furniture.

"Looks like someone left in a hurry."

"We'll see about getting some ship's logs on the next trip," Henry said. "There's probably something in there that tells us what happened."

"I bet whatever it was, it wasn't very nice," Ash said when they rounded the next corner.

"I'm gonna have to agree with you there," Titus said, looking around.

The corridor was blocked by piled up bulkheads and furniture, the walls around the barricade scored with scorch marks and splattered with blood. A dead drone lay on the floor, a hole blasted through its body. Henry kicked it, sending it clattering down the hallway.

"OK, I'm starting to freak out," Ash said, eyeing the barricade. "This looks like there was a fight."

"This is a research ship," Titus said. "What would a bunch of scientists and geeks be fighting over?"

"Research grants?"

Past the barricade, the damage to the corridor was even worse. The flooring was ripped up in large swathes, leaving exposed wiring underneath, and used to construct shelters, all of them falling apart after years of being left unattended. Titus tripped over one of them, and it crumbled to rusted out flakes under his weight, sending his foot through the floor. Henry caught his elbow before Titus fell to the floor, pulling him up and out of the gap in the floor.

"Thanks," Titus grunted, shaking off Henry's arm on his elbow.

"Uh, you got something on you," Ash pointed to Titus' suit, swinging his light over to him. "Shit, is that blood?"

The front of Titus' suit was smeared with something dark, and when he swiped his fingers over it, the glove came away red. He rubbed his fingers together, frowning.

"I don't think so," he shook his head. "It looks like some sort of oil. There's broken conduits all over the place. Watch where you step, could be tricky footing."

"All right," Henry said, yanking Titus' wrist and pulling him down the corridor. "Let's get the hell out of here before someone falls through the floor. Nobody comes on board this ship alone, and we find a way to get a proper scan done as quickly as possible."

"What the hell makes you think you can tell us how to do our jobs?" Titus tried to pull away from Henry, but couldn't break his grip on his wrist.

"Don't worry, Titus, I'm not angling for your job," Henry told him. "So keep the paranoia to a minimum."

"Oh, as if you could actually take my job from me," Titus sneered. "Just because you're fucking the captain doesn't mean you're part of the crew."

Henry let go of Titus and stared at him for a long moment, then turned his back on him and walked away, heading toward the _Nemesis_. Ash shook his head and followed Henry, leaving Titus alone in the corridor surrounded by increasing darkness.

"Shit," he said, kicking a nearby panel hard enough that it crumpled under his foot.

"By the way, genius, that went out on open comms," Dirk's voice told him. "I haven't seen Alex that pissed off in a long time."

"Fuck."

"Yeah, that's what she said."

Titus turned off his comms, and followed Henry and Ash back to the ship.

#

Alex walked into the airlock just in time to see Henry drop his helmet, cross the airlock to where Titus was just unzipping his suit, and lay Titus out with one punch to the face. After Titus went down, Henry stood over him for a moment, clenching and opening his fists.

"You're right, I'm not part of the crew," he said, and Alex stopped in her tracks. "At least who I may or may not be fucking isn't affecting my decisions, the consequences of which could endanger the lives of the people around me. I have no investment in you as a person, Titus, outside of go in, get the job done, get out alive." He didn't give Titus a chance to reply, merely turned around and walked away. He met Alex's eyes, squaring his jaw, but said nothing as he walked past her and out of the airlock.

Alex silently counted to ten, then walked to where Titus was just picking himself up off the floor.

"Get yourself cleaned up, then get to work," she told him. Without waiting for a reply, she left him where he was and walked out. She headed straight for the bridge, not stopping to check where Henry was, and when she got there, she sank into her chair, burying her face in her hands. She was very aware of multiple eyes on her, and sat up after a moment, squaring her shoulders and clearing her throat.

"Right," she said. "Back to work." She turned to Ash, who was sitting at his console, scrolling through lines of text. "What have you got, Ash?"

"I managed to get through and get the damaged areas sealed off. There's no way to repair the damage, not without a lot of time in drydock, but at least the atmosphere won't vent when the life support kicks in. That'll take a while, so when we go in, we'll have to wear our suits, unless you want to wait."

"It's a big ship, it'll take a while," Alex said. "We'll go in with suits, and if there's enough air to breathe while we're there, so much the better. What are you working on now?"

"I downloaded some of the ship's records," he said. "So far, it's all encrypted, though. I can't make anything out. I'm running it through some decryption algorithms, maybe they'll spit something out."

"OK, keep working on that," Alex said. "Dirk, Teri, any luck with those scans?"

"It's still the same as before," Teri told her. "It could be people in cryo pods, it could be an overgrown garden, or it could be something completely different."

"Wasn't the internal scan the same?" Dirk asked.

"Yeah," Alex nodded. "Looks like if we want to know what it is, we'll have to go on foot and check it ourselves." She rubbed her fingers over her temple. "Ash, leave that for a moment. See if you can pull up any schematics, find out where the data core is."

"Aye, captain," Ash said, fingers already flying over his console. "I'm putting it up on the display now."

Even shrunken down to a schematic the size of the main display, the _Pathos Verdes_ was an immense ship. The blinking green dot indicating the location of the _Nemesis_ in the docking bay shrunk down to a pinprick when Ash zoomed out the display to fit the entire ship.

Alex got up out of her chair and walked over to the display, peering at the blinking red dot near the bow of the ship.

"I take it that's the data core?" She traced a path between the two dots, then touched a large blank area in the forward decks. Unlike the other areas of the ship, which were labeled with the functions of the rooms and color-coded by department, it contained only the most basic layout of the rooms and corridors, and spanned most of the depth of the ship, with the exception of a couple of decks on top and bottom. "What's in here?"

"I'm... not sure," Ash shook his head. "It just says 'special research', but when I try to find out more, it clams up."

"Even with the command module?"

"Yeah," Ash said. "Whatever it was, it's wrapped up in multiple layers of security that I can't get through. If you want to find out what's in there, the only way is to go in and look."

"Is there anywhere we can dock closer to the bow, so we don't have to walk this far?" Several blue dots appeared on the schematic, none of them forward of the special research area. "That's a no, then," Alex sighed. "OK, looks like we'll have to go in the long way."

The main door onto the bridge slid open and Titus stepped in. Alex turned to look at him, taking in the bruise blooming around his mouth and the split in his lower lip. He stopped when he saw Alex looking at him, glaring back at her defiantly.

"Are all the environmental suits in working condition?" Alex asked, forcing herself to move on.

"Yeah," Titus nodded. "We got them all patched up on the last stop."

"Good," Alex said. "Get them ready, we'll be going in."

"All of us?"

"No, not all of us. You'll stay on board, monitor everything from here."

Titus opened his mouth to say something, then thought the better of it and nodded instead. "Aye, captain."

"I've plotted out the most direct route to the data core, captain," Ash spoke from his console. I'm loading it onto everyone's flexis, so no one will get lost, even if you stray from the path."

"There'll be no straying from the path," Alex said. "We're going in and out. Dirk, grab what you need for your field kit, we're heading out in half an hour." She got up from her chair, and headed for the door. "Let's get this done as quickly as possible, and then we can go home."

She headed for Henry's quarters, knocking on the door rather than barging straight in. When he opened the door, she raised a hand in a half-hearted wave.

"Hi," she said. Henry stood aside to let her in, and Alex stepped into the room. She reached for his hand, smoothing her fingers over his knuckles. The skin wasn't even broken anymore, and only the faintest trace remained of the injury. Alex knew Henry made a point of getting his nanites replaced regularly, which was why he was healing so quickly. A similar wound on her would take at least several hours.

"So, Ash found a way to get to the data core," Alex said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Wanna come along?"

"You sure you want me there?"

"Yes, I want you there," Alex said. "Titus is staying here, so you don't have to worry about him."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Good. He's been more and more of a dick since the whole Vaellel Three thing. Did you know he thought I was pregnant? Because of all the throwing up and everything? He made a big speech about how he'd want to be involved in the kid's life, but that he'd accept you being the one to raise it with me. You know, if we were to do it together.

"He can't have been too happy with that thought," Henry said. "I take it he knows the truth now?"

"Everyone knows," Alex sighed. "Anyway, we're leaving in twenty-five minutes," she said, getting to her feet. "If you want to."

"Alex," Henry called out, and she stopped, turning back to see him coming toward her. "I want to. With you." He stepped close enough that their bodies were touching and their faces were only inches apart. "Wherever you go, that's where I want to be."

Alex didn't move for a moment, then leaned forward to kiss him, raising her hands to pull him closer. She tugged at his hair, and pushed off from the door he'd backed her up against, heading them toward the bed.

"Aren't we supposed to be heading out?" Henry asked, half-speaking the words into her mouth.

"We've got time," she said, biting at his lips. "Twenty minutes—" She broke off as they tumbled to the bed. "We can get a lot done in twenty minutes," she grinned down at him.

"Quite right," Henry answered, pulling her back down into a kiss.

 

#

"That must have been one hell of a research grant they were fighting over," Ash muttered, eyeing the burned out corpse, still in an environmental suit, lying slumped against the wall.

"Oliver, are you all right?" Alex asked. Oliver was standing with his eyes closed, head bent forward, not moving.

"I'm fine, captain," he said, raising his head. "Just a little headache."

"Dirk, check him," Alex said. "I don't want anyone getting sick while we're here."

Oliver straightened up, shaking his head. "I'm fine, really. I've had this headache for a while now."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Dirk ran his scanner over Oliver, frowning at it. "The suit's muddling the results, I'm not getting much here."

Alex pointed a finger at Oliver. "If it gets worse, I want you to go back to the _Nemesis_ , all right?"

"Yes, captain," Oliver nodded. "Now, could you please stop fussing over me? We've got a job to do."

"Part of my job as captain is worrying about my crew," Alex told him. "But you're right, let's focus on the job."

They kept walking down the path Ash had programmed for them. They found several more bodies, in a state similar to the first one. Dirk scanned each one of them, and since their suits were open, he got clear readings on them.

"As far as I can tell, they were all dying of radiation poisoning," he said. "Given the blaster wounds, I'd say the radiation's not what killed them, but even if they hadn't been shot, they'd have been dead sooner rather than later."

"Where'd the it come from?"

"I don't know," Dirk said. "I'm not picking up anything beyond the normal background radiation. Everything's clean."

"So, what, something or someone came aboard, killed everyone with radiation, and just left them all there?" Alex said over the comms. "That makes no sense."

"We don't know it was done intentionally," Alex said. "It could have been an accident." She opened the door in front of her and looked up, gaping. The far wall and part of the floor was missing, leaving the room open to space, contained only by the shimmering forcefield. Alex backed out and closed the door. "Nice work on getting the damaged areas of the ship contained, Ash. But you could have plotted the route a little better."

"Sorry, captain," Ash blanched. "Some of the damage isn't showing up on the schematics. I'll find another way," he was already working on his dataflex. "If we go this way," he pointed down the hall, "we should be able to get around it."

"How much time will this add onto the trip? We've got limited oxygen in these suits."

"Shouldn't be more than ten minutes," Ash said. "We'll be fine. And once we find the data core, we'll find the main computer. I can use that to try and repair some of the systems, if you'd like. Maybe there's some way we could get the reactor to squeeze out enough power to get us back home."

"I don't think that'll be necessary," Alex shook her head. "This isn't a salvage mission; we're just here for the core." She started off down the path, checking the map on her dataflex as she went.

"We're going to leave the ship here?" Teri asked.

"It's not like we can take it back with us," Alex shrugged.

"Why not? Do you realize how much money we could make from a find like this?"

"Do you realize how much attention we'd bring on ourselves if we showed up with a find like this? I don't know if you remember, but one of the reasons we do the work we do is that we want to stay out of the public eye."

"With the money we'd make from this, we could afford not to work, ever again," Teri pointed out. "Think about it, Alex. No more begging for jobs, no more putting up with asshole clients, we could do whatever we wanted."

"I'm _doing_ what I want," Alex said, keeping her eyes on her dataflex.

There was a click on the comm line as Teri switched to a private comm, and then Teri said, "Keep telling yourself that."

Alex cast a quick look back at Henry. He was bringing up the rear, his gun strapped to his thigh, his gun hand hanging loosely by the holster. He caught her looking and the helmet light caught his smile. Alex felt her lip twitch in a smile and turned back to her dataflex, leading the team down the darkened corridor.

#

"Ash, are we lost?" Alex's voice in his ear carried a note of annoyance.

"Sorry, captain," he answered, scrolling through the schematic on his dataflex. "Not all the damaged areas are registering on the schematic."

"Find me a way to the data core, Mister Foster."

"Ash, how are we doing on the air front?" Dirk asked. "The suits are running low, and if we can't breathe on the ship, we'll have to head back to the _Nemesis_ within the next twenty minutes."

"We've got a couple more minutes before it's breathable," Ash said, checking his dataflex. "I wouldn't recommend rushing it. The air's probably still a bit thin."

"Guys?" Oliver called from behind him, where he was standing with Henry. "Do you mind if we stop here for a minute?"

"Are you all right, Oliver?" Alex was at his side almost immediately, helping him sit down on the floor.

"I'm dizzy," Oliver said plaintively. "I thought it was my air mix, but I checked, and it's fine."

"Why didn't you say something earlier?"

"Because I thought I could handle it," he said. "Sorry, captain."

"We'll wait here until the air's breathable," Alex said. "I've seen people get sick from breathing suit air, it could be that. If you feel better after you're out of the suit, we'll go on. If you don't, Dirk will take you back to the _Nemesis_."

"I could come and get him," Titus chimed in over the comms.

"You stay where you are," Alex told him. "Dirk will take Oliver back if he needs to go back."

"While we wait, I'll go check if the route is clear," Ash said. "If that's all right with you, captain."

Alex shook her head. "No, we're all going together."

"I can go with him," Teri said.

"I said no," Alex snapped. "I know you guys are excited to do some exploring, but we're not splitting up.

"Look, there's no point in arguing," Oliver pushed himself to his feet. "I'm fine, we can keep going."

Alex looked him over, narrowing her eyes at the pallor of his skin, and then nodded. "All right, let's get going. As soon as the air is breathable, Oliver, you're going to take a break for a while."

"Aye, captain," he sketched a salute, grinning. "Now come on, let's go see what's in the next room."

They walked into the next room and stopped in their tracks, staring.

"Whoa," Ash breathed.

"Whoa is right," Teri said, turning around on the spot, looking around the huge room they found themselves in. There were several levels to the room, with walkways winding around the walls of the room. In the center of the room was a giant tank, completely enclosed, its outer walls opaque. "That looks like an airlock," she pointed to a door leading into the tank off a narrow walkway circling the tank.

"I know I'm starting to repeat myself, but what the hell?" Ash asked, walking closer to the tank, running his fingers over the edges of the consoles around the tank. "What the hell is in there?" He walked back around, scanning the consoles for a control module slot. Once the consoles were activated, Ash went back and forth between them, trying to get them to give him some sort of coherent information.

"By the way," he turned to the rest of the team. "It's safe to breathe now." He set his dataflex down on the console and unlatched his suit helmet. The seal released with a hiss, and Ash took a cautious breath of the ship's air. "Tastes a little stale, but it's fine." Alex stood by the door, watching him, her helmet still on, and he frowned. "You're waiting to see if I keel over and die, aren't you?"

"You betcha," Alex gave him a grin. "But it's very nice of you to offer yourself up as a guinea pig for the rest of us." She followed his example and took off her own helmet, taking a deep breath. "It's nice not to have to look out at everything through a fishbowl." She went back to Oliver, who was leaning on Henry's shoulder, and helped him take his helmet off. "Come on, sit down, before you pass out." Together, she and Henry led Oliver to sit down on the floor, leaning against a wall beside the door.

Alex watched Ash work the consoles. Using his dataflex, he tapped into the ship's computer to try and get an idea of what he was dealing with. "It keeps giving me the same 'special research' classification as before," he looked to Alex over his shoulder. "I think the systems in this section are cut off from the rest of the ship, restricted to work only from within. I'll see if I can get in from here." Setting his dataflex down, Ash went back to work on the consoles.

"What's in there?" Dirk came to stand beside Ash, pointing at the tank.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out right now," Ash told him. "I just can't get these systems to cooperate."

Eventually, the giant tank lit up from within, its walls slowly turning transparent. As they watched, the contents of the tank came into view, leaving them all speechless.

"Is that...?" Ash tilted his head to the side. "Somebody else say what I'm thinking, I don't want to be the one to say it."

"It's a giant squid," Teri said, and Ash gave her a grateful nod. "Don't worry, you're not hallucinating."

"Oh, good," Ash said, unable to take his eyes off the creature floating in the tank. "I was starting to worry. Why is there no water in the tank? Don't squid need water?"

"I think it's a giant _space_ squid," Teri said. "It's probably a zero-g tank."

"Is it dead?" Oliver got up from where he was sitting on the floor and came closer to the tank, peering at the creature inside. "It's not moving."

"I think it's in some sort of hibernation," Dirk said, looking over the consoles. "Or at least it was, until we turned on the tank."

"Are you telling me that thing is going to wake up?" Teri eyed the tank. "That thing is huge, what it if breaks out?"

"It's not going to break out," Ash reassured her. "This tank is military grade nanocrystalline MSU, it would take a lot more than a giant squid to break it."

"Ash, what the hell did you do?" Alex came up beside him, staring at the tank. "What the hell is that thing?"

"It's a giant squid, captain," Ash told her, straight-faced. "And it seems to be coming out of hibernation," he added when a giant tentacle swept past them, twitching.

"Fabulous," Alex said. "You just had to go and poke at things, didn't you? Why couldn't you just have left it alone and focused on finding us a path to the data core?"

"Guys, I think I know what this is," Teri said, scrolling through her dataflex. "And if this is what I think it is, we _have_ to take this ship back with us."

"What are you talking about, Teri?" Alex read the dataflex over Teri's shoulder.

"It's a giant space squid," Teri said.

"Yes, we can see that."

"No, you don't," Teri shook her head. "Look at this, it's an _Architeuthis marmairis moop_. They were hunted almost to extinction a couple hundred years ago, and then the rest of them just disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them. This is huge, Alex! Nobody's seen one of these in ages!"

"Guys, where's Oliver?" Henry's voice called their attention to the center of the room, where Oliver had previously stood, his hands pressed against the tank.

Everyone looked around the room, Dirk checked the corridor they had come from, but there was no sign of Oliver. Finally, Alex caught motion out of the corner of her eye and looked up.

"Shit," she said, looking for a way to get up onto the walkway that led to the airlock. "Oliver, stop!"

"It's OK, captain," he looked down at her, his voice perfectly calm. "I just want to say hi."

"Say hi? What—" Alex finally spotted a ladder and climbed up it as fast as she could, then walked across the walkway toward Oliver, who was opening the airlock. "Oliver? Please don't do that. Please don't go in there."

"Can't you hear it?" Oliver looked back at her over his shoulder. "It's curious about us, it just wants to get to know us."

"No, Oliver, no," Alex held out her hand, moving slowly. "Please, stop, just... come back here."

The airlock swung open, and Oliver stepped inside. "It'll be all right, Alex. I'll be right back."

"Oliver, no!" Alex lunged for the airlock, but it swung closed and the seal engaged before she could reach it.

Alex ran for the ladder, sliding down it, then back to the tank, where Oliver was floating in the tank's zero gravity environment.

"Ash, can you reverse whatever you did? Put the squid back to sleep?"

"No can do, captain," Ash's fingers flew over the console. "It's an automated system."

"Fabulous," Alex frowned. "We need to get him out of there. Dirk, Ash, get up there."

"Alex!" Teri pointed at the tank, where Oliver was now floating face to eyeball with the giant squid. He reached out a hand and touched the squid, which let out a sound deep enough to make the floor vibrate, and wrapped a tentacle around Oliver. "Oh my god, what is it doing?" The squid descended lower in the tank, out of their direct line of sight. "Where's it taking him?"

"Ash, what's the air like in there? Obviously it's not a complete vacuum in there, or Oliver would be dead by now."

Ash checked the display in front of him. "He's got about ten minutes," he told her. "He'll probably start getting dizzy in five, and after that he'll pass out and suffocate."

"Crap," Alex said. "OK, think, everyone, what can we do?"

"Other than going in there and trying to get him out, I'm all out of ideas," Dirk said.

"That thing is huge, we won't stand a chance if it decides it doesn't like us," Teri pointed out.

"Then what?" Alex asked. "Ash, what are you doing?"

"I'm pumping in more oxygen, so Oliver won't die before we figure out how to get him out."

The ship lurched then, hard enough to send them all flying across the room. Alex tried to cover her head when she saw the rungs of the ladder heading towards her, but she moved too slowly, and everything went dark.

#

"Oh, thank god," Titus exhaled when Alex opened her eyes. "I was starting to get worried."

"What are you doing here, Titus? You were supposed to stay on the _Nemesis_." Alex sat up slowly, wincing at the vicious pain blooming in her temple.

"None of you were responding on comms, and then we jumped to hyperspace, I figured I should come see if you were all still alive."

"Did you say we—?" Alex's eyes widened and she pulled herself up to her feet. "Where's Henry?"

"I'm over here," Henry waved from where he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the tank. "Did he just say we're in hyperspace?"

"Yeah," Alex nodded. "Are you all right? Are you—"

"I'm fine, Alex," he grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "For the time being, I'm perfectly all right."

"Yeah, for the time being," Alex frowned. "What happens if it's a delayed reaction?"

"There's nothing we can do if it is," Henry told her.

Ash frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Let's just say that jumps into hyperspace don't agree with my brain," Henry said. "How long were we out?"

"I don't know," Titus shook his head. "I got lost on the way here, so I've got no idea how long it took me to get here. That's how I know we're in hyperspace; I found a room back there that's half ripped away. Imagine my surprise when I saw what was outside the ship."

"Ash, anything from the computer?" Alex asked.

"I'm getting all sorts of weird readings," Ash told her. "The engines are still dead, and they haven't come online for a long time. The ship doesn't have a jump drive, either, and it's not like there were any jump gates lying around where we found it." He looked up. "I have no idea how we jumped."

"How long were we out?" Alex repeated.

"According to the computer, twenty minutes."

"Shit, Oliver!" Titus looked around for his helmet, put it on, and ran for the ladder. He latched his helmet as he crossed the walkway and reached for the airlock doors. "Ash, check the atmosphere in there, see if he needs more oxygen. I'll see if I can get him away from that thing."

As Alex watched, Titus stumbled, falling to his knees, clutching at his head. She scrambled up the ladder, and when she reached Titus, he was still kneeling, and when he looked up, there was blood flowing from his nose.

"Are you all right? What happened?"

Titus looked around, disoriented. He licked his lip and grimaced at the taste of blood. He rubbed his hand over his face, and wiped the blood off on his suit. "I think... I think Oliver just talked to me in my head," he said, looking back over his shoulder at the tank. "You didn't hear it?"

"No," Alex shook her head. "What did he say?"

"He just said not to add anymore oxygen, that _it_ doesn't like that."

"To hell with it," Alex said. "What about Oliver?"

Titus blinked. "He says he's fine."

"Has he ever done anything like that before?" Alex asked.

Titus stared at the floor. "Um."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it wasn't something that needed to be shared. There are aspects of my private life that I like keeping, you know, _private_ ," Titus glared at her. "Now, I don't know about you, but I'm getting him out of the tank." He got to his feet and headed back toward the airlock, gripping the railing to keep himself steady.

"I don't think you'll have to," Dirk pointed at the tank, where the squid had reappeared, Oliver still wrapped up in its tentacle. He appeared to have survived the trip in the tank and looked none the worse for wear. In fact, he had his arms wrapped loosely around the tentacle, his face pressed against it.

The squid floated up to the airlock and released its hold on Oliver, leaving him free to float toward the door. Oliver lingered in front of it for a moment, reaching out to touch the skin between its eyes, and the squid reached up with a tentacle, brushing it over Oliver's back.

Eventually, Oliver floated back to the airlock. When the door opened on the walkway, Oliver stumbled out, and fell straight into Alex and Titus' waiting arms.

"Dirk, get up here!" Alex watched Dirk grab his field kit and climb up the ladder, then looked down to Oliver, whose head was lying in her lap. Dirk skidded to a stop beside him and knelt down, already running a scanner over Oliver.

"He's fine," he said. "I don't know how, but there's no damage, even after all the time he spent in there. He'll come around soon." He opened his kit and pulled out a portable oxygen mask, then positioned it over Oliver's face. "This will help."

When Oliver opened his eyes a long anxious moment later, Dirk ran the scanner over him again, then leaned over Oliver with an injector.

"Dirk, I'm fine," Oliver batted away his hand and tried to sit up.

"I think I should make sure," Dirk put down the injector and leaned closer in with the scanner.

"Seriously, I'm okay."

"I'm the doctor. I need to be thorough. Take off your pants."

Alex rolled her eyes, gently moved Oliver's head off her lap and onto Titus', and headed for the ladder. "Clearly, you guys don't need me here anymore."

"Dude, I'm _right here_ ," Titus snapped at Dirk.

"That's all right," Dirk said sunnily. "You can take your pants off, too."

Alex slid down the ladder and leaned against the wall next to Henry, sighing.

"You see? This is what I have to deal with every day."

"I know," Henry patted her shoulder. "Your life, so hard."

Alex punched him in the shoulder and pushed away from the wall. "Dirk, get down here," she said without looking up. "Ash, sit down before you pass out from blood loss." There was a nasty looking cut on his temple, and he kept wiping at his eyes to keep them clear.

Teri came up to Alex, and spoke in a low voice, quiet enough to keep everyone else from overhearing.

"What do we do now?"

"We'll wait until everyone is patched up, then we'll try to find out what happened. And then we'll try to find a way out of this mess."

"Do you have any ideas on how to do that?"

"I haven't got a clue," Alex shook her head. "But in the interest of everyone not freaking out too much, including myself, let's keep thinking happy thoughts on that subject, mmkay?"

"Alex, take a look at this," Henry called her over to a console on the far end of the room. There was a video playing on the screen in front of him, albeit silent and distorted into unrecognizable shapes.

"What is it?"

"It looks like some sort of a log," Henry said. "I think I can clean it up a bit, or at least get some of the audio to play." He stepped back from the display. "Let's see if it plays."

There was a loud hiss of static and eventually the video stabilized into an image of a middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat.

"—has been brought to my attention—reported concerns with the— we have been—in-depth report on the project and its—" The video stuttered, froze, and then dissolved into static. Henry bent over the console, trying to restore the video, but nothing worked.

"Sorry," Henry said. "Reconstructing things isn't my forte."

"How the hell did you get through the security?" Ash came over and looked at the console. "These systems are protected six ways from Sunday."

Henry gave Ash a wry smile. "You learn a lot when you do what I do."

Ash stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't want to know," he held up a hand. "I'll try running this through some filters, see if I can clean it up."

Alex tried not to hover over Ash's shoulder too much, but there wasn't anything else for her to do. She checked on Oliver, who'd come down off the walkway, and was sitting with Titus, the two of them talking quietly.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm OK," Oliver told her.

"No, you're not," Titus shook his head. "Dirk says he was minutes away from dying," he got to his feet, advancing on Alex. "What were you thinking, letting him go in there?"

"Titus, stop," Oliver got up and grabbed Titus' hand, pulling him back. "This isn't her fault."

"She's the captain," Titus glared. "It's her responsibility to watch out for her crew."

"Stop it," Oliver put an arm around Titus, squeezing his shoulder. "You're overreacting."

"I'm not overreacting!" Titus pulled away from Oliver. "You almost died!"

"But I didn't," Oliver said quietly. "It wouldn't have let me die."

"It?" Alex raised an eyebrow.

Oliver glanced at the tank. "It told me it wouldn't hurt me, and it made me leave before I got hurt."

"Wait, you're saying it actually talked to you?" Alex asked.

Oliver nodded. "It wasn't... talking, like you and I are talking right now. It was more like it was using ideas to communicate rather than single words."

"What did it say?"

"Not to be afraid," Oliver said. "It's happy we woke it up; it's been alone for a very long time."

"Hey, Alex, I think I got something!" Ash called out, and she went back to his console, followed by Titus and Oliver.

"Whenever this was made, they didn't make their data storage as durable as it is now," Ash said. "It's choppy as hell, but I got as much of it as I could."

"Go ahead and play it," Alex said.

Ash entered a command on his dataflex and the video resolved into the image of the middle-aged scientist again.

"This is Doctor Victor Kuppelweiser, lead scientist for Project Tannhäuser. It has been brought to my attention that several of my staff have reported concerns with the ethics of the experiments we have been conducting. In an effort to address and alleviate these concerns, I have prepared an in-depth report on the projects and its—"

"Sorry, that's where it breaks off," Ash said. "I got one more, if you want to see it, but it's pretty fragmented."

"Whatever you've got, let's see it."

A young woman, also wearing a lab coat, appeared on the screen next, speaking in a half-whisper.

"I am recording this against the express wishes of—" The video froze and jumped. "I understand that there are certain expectations for this project—" Another stutter. "The subjects in the experiment, both human and—" The video cut off, leaving a screen full of static behind.

"That was the best one," Ash said. "The rest are all jumbled, a word here and there, nothing coherent."

"Guys," Teri said, staring at the screen. "What the hell were they doing here?"

"I think I know a way to find out," Oliver said, his voice quiet and shaking. He walked back to the tank, and pressed his hands against its wall, the squid floating up in front of him. It was almost perfectly still, its strange eyes fixed on Oliver.

Titus walked up behind Oliver and put a hand on his shoulder, then pulled back as if the touched burned him.

"What happened?" Alex asked as Titus massaged his hand.

"I don't know," he said. "It felt like an electric shock, my hand's all tingly."

"Let's not touch him again while he's... doing whatever he's doing," Alex said, pulling Titus away from Oliver. "Just in case."

"Just in case what?"

"I don't know, Titus," Alex sighed. "I've never been in a situation like this before, you know." She looked around the room. "Where's Henry?"

"He said something about going to look around," Dirk said, looking up from where he sat with Ash and Teri.

Alex sighed, and lifted her wrist, activating the retractable dataflex. The blinking blue dot that represented Henry was several rooms away, and she headed for the corridor.

"Alex, what are we doing?" Teri called out to her.

"I'm going to get Henry," Alex said. "You're going to keep an eye on Oliver while he's..." she waved a hand in the tank's direction. "And then we're going to figure out what the hell is going on."

She was less than two hundred feet away from Henry's location when the lights in the corridor flickered and turned red.

"Fuck," Alex tripped over something in the dark corridor. "What now?" She fumbled for her comm button. " Henry, do you read?" There was no answer, and Alex struggled to her feet as the ship lurched again. "Dammit." She flipped the comms to the general channel. "Can anyone read me?" The glanced down at the dataflex strapped to her wrist, and all the comm channels were green and clear, but there was no answer.

She flipped on her flashlight and swept it over the corridor. Panels had come loose from the ceiling, leaving exposed wires hanging down. Alex ducked under them and continued down the hallway, heading toward Henry's signal. In her hurry to get to the room, she didn't notice the missing panel in the floor and tripped, falling to her hands and knees in the corridor.

"You know, that's a good look for you," said a voice that had no right to be there. Alex looked up slowly, shaking her head, and her eyes swept over the figure standing in front of her. When she straightened up enough to get a look at the face, she gasped, reaching for her gun. Major Thomas Marshall, dead for the last seven years, stood in the corridor, smirking down at her.

"Hello, Alex," he said. "Did you miss me?"

Alex brought up the gun, but she was too slow. Tommy had already knelt beside her, catching her wrist in a painful grip, and twisting just hard enough to make her drop the gun.

"I always knew you'd go far," he said, leaning in until his lips were pressed against her cheek. "It's a pity you had to leave the military, though. You had so much potential there." Alex could smell the blood soaking his uniform, flowing from the wound in his neck.

"I've got you to thank for that," Alex snarled, pushing him away. "They don't let drug addicts serve in the military."

"Nonsense," Tommy smiled easily, pulling her to her feet. "We would have found a way to hide it."

" _We_ wouldn't have found anything," Alex said, lifting her chin defiantly. "You're dead."

A corner of Tommy's lip twitched. "Are you so sure of that?" He touched her cheek gently, slipping his fingertips underneath the collar of her suit. "Then why does feel so real?"

"You're not real," Alex shook her head. "You're dead. Henry killed you."

"Ah, yes, Henry," Tommy scoffed, taking a step back. "Your valiant knight in shining armor." He looked around the corridor, looking around. "Where is he now, do you think? Why isn't he here, riding to your rescue again?" He stepped in closer, leaning in to kiss her, holding on to Alex's chin hard enough that his fingers dug into her jaw.

Alex stopped struggling, and let Tommy move in all the way, until he was pinning her to the wall. Reaching up with one hand, she cupped the back of Tommy's head, running her fingers through his hair. With her other hand, she pulled out the small knife she always kept tucked into her belt. Tightening her fingers in Tommy's hair, she pulled him back from her, smiling.

"Henry doesn't need to rescue me anymore," she said, and plunged the knife into Tommy's gut. "I can take care of myself, especially when it comes to dealing with someone like you." She pushed Tommy away, stabbing the knife into him again, and then a third time. As he fell to his knees, Alex closed her eyes and firmly ignored the part of her mind that wondered why, if Tommy was imaginary, she was feeling his warm blood flowing over her hands.

When she opened her eyes and looked down, she was still clutching her knife, but the blade and her hands were clean. Tommy's body wasn't where she expected it to be; she was alone in the corridor. Alex leaned against the wall, hands shaking, and slid the knife back into its sheath. She took several deep breaths and rubbed a hand over her cheek to wipe away the feeling of Tommy's fingers on her skin.

"It wasn't real," she whispered. "It wasn't real, he wasn't here. Get a grip, Alex."

She pushed off from the wall and headed off in the direction of Henry's signal. If she was remembering correctly, the room he was in was the one where half the floor had been ripped away, leaving the room exposed to space. The room was just around the corner, the door firmly shut, just like they'd left it after Ash replotted their route. Irrationally, she found herself worrying she would find nothing but an empty room. Shaking her head, she opened the door and stepped inside.

#

Henry sat at the edge of the ripped away floor, feet dangling over the edge, his boots skimming the forcefield and throwing up sparks as he swung his feet back and forth. He heard the door open behind him, and when Alex came into the room, he moved over a bit, making space for her. She sat down beside him, and they sat in companionable silence, watching the multicolored streaks of hyperspace swirl around the ship.

"Whatcha doin'?" Alex asked, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Enjoying the view," Henry told her. "I didn't think I'd ever see this again."

"I didn't think I'd ever see this quite like _this_ ," Alex swung her foot into the forcefield, the disruption making the field ripple. "It's pretty, though. And peaceful."

"Yeah," Henry said, his lips pressed to Alex's hair. He put an arm around her and held her close.

"What's with you?" Alex asked after another while had passed in silence. "Is something wrong?"

Henry shook his head. "No, nothing's wrong."

"Come on, Henry," Alex pulled back from him, giving him a dubious look. "I think I know you well enough after all these years to tell when you've got something on your mind."

Henry closed his eyes. If only that were true. "I'm fine, Alex. I promise."

"You're worried something's going to happen to you because of the jump, aren't you?"

"My head hasn't exploded yet," Henry said, forcing cheer into his voice.

"I don't want you talking like that," Alex told him. "You're going to be fine. We're going to find a way out of this, we'll go back to Eurydice, and then we'll—"

"Alex, come in," Dirk's voice rang out over the comms.

"Dammit," Alex swore, fumbling for her wrist dataflex. "What is it, Dirk?"

"Oliver's done, uh, communing with the squid. He's got something."

"I'll be there in a minute," Alex told him, and turned off her comms. "Sorry," she said, getting to her feet. "You wanna come with me?"

"I'm gonna stay here for a bit longer," Henry said. "Go, be the captain. I'll see you in a bit."

"It's all going to be OK," Alex told him, leaning down to kiss his forehead. "You'll see."

"She's wrong, you know," the voice came from behind him, and Henry spun around to come face to face with Cyrus. He was barely standing, blood flowing from his eyes and ears, mouth and nose, frost outlining the edges of his suit and the tips of his hair.

"Cyrus..." Henry breathed. "What...?"

"She's wrong," Cyrus repeated. "You're not going to survive this. You can already tell, can't you? Feel the pressure building, waiting for just the wrong moment to break?"

Henry dug the heel of his hand into his temple, trying to rub out the pain he wasn't sure was really blooming there.

"And when you're dead," Cyrus continued, "how long do you think she'll last? How long do you think she'll manage to stick to her new and improved routine?" He took a few shaky steps toward Henry, until he was close enough that Henry could smell the blood on Cyrus and feel the chill radiating from him. "She'll be back on Nanox before your body's had a chance to go cold," Cyrus told him, his lips brushing Henry's cheek. He took a step back from her, and his heel caught the edge of the ripped away floor. He teetered on the edge, arms flailing as Cyrus threw back his head and laughed a horrible wet-sounding laugh that trailed off into a rattling wheeze. When Henry finally regained his balance, Cyrus was gone.

Henry stepped away from the edge of the floor and fell to his knees, his breathing harsh and ragged. He wasn't sure what would have happened if he'd fallen onto the forcefield that sealed the room off, but he didn't want to risk it. Not when he'd just had a very graphic reminder of what happened to people exposed in the vacuum of space.

Slowly, he pulled himself together and got up, heading for the door. He briefly glanced back at the multicolored swirl of hyperspace, then left the room, pausing in the corridor as the door shut behind him. He took another deep breath, and headed back to the tank room.

Alex was standing by the tank, one hand on its wall, looking up at the space squid floating inside. Oliver stood beside her, speaking quietly. Alex ran her fingers over the wall of the tank, and one of the squid's smaller tentacles moved to mirror her motion.

"You look like you've just seen a ghost," Titus said, staring wide-eyed at Henry. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Henry said, flinching at Titus' choice of words, but not stopping as he walked past Titus. "Didn't know you cared," he tossed over his shoulder, determined to keep things normal.

"I don't," Titus said, flustered. "But if you're sick, we need to know."

"I'm _fine_ ," Henry said again. He was almost at Alex's side, and then he stopped mid-stride when she turned toward him. Cyrus stood behind her, trailing his fingers over Alex's shoulder.

"Look at her," Cyrus said, his voice full of gurgling noises. "You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she's so close to the edge. All it will take is the smallest push, and she'll be gone."

Henry rubbed his hand over his face. Cyrus draped an arm over Alex's shoulder and ran his fingers through her hair, and Alex shivered slightly, looking around her, searching for a draft.

"Do you ever think about the day I died, Henry? Do you ever think about _how_ I died? It's not as quick as the old time movies would have you believe, you know. Dying in the vacuum of space actually takes _hours_."

"Henry, are you listening?" Dirk waved his hand in front of Henry's face, and Henry tore his eyes away from Cyrus.

"Yeah, sorry. What?"

"Oliver was just explaining what he learned from his giant new friend in there," Dirk nodded in the tank's direction. "You looked like you were spacing right out. Are you feeling all right?"

"Can everyone stop asking me that, please?" Henry snapped, and when everyone stopped to stare at him, he shook his head. "I'm _fine_ ," he said, then turned to Oliver. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

"This whole ship was one big research facility," Oliver said. "They were trying to figure out how to splice the squid into humans, to give them the ability to control hyperspace."

"Wait, are you saying—"

"The squid jumped the ship," Oliver nodded. "It was startled, and it reacted without thinking."

"How can it do that, jump into hyperspace without a gate, or a drive?"

"That's what I asked it," Oliver said. "It was very surprised that we can't do the same."

"Guys, this is huge," Teri said. "If we could get the ship back home, the possible scientific advances would be—"

"That's all fine and dandy," Ash interrupted her. "But can it jump us back to where we started?"

Oliver shook his head. "It's dying, it doesn't have the strength," he said, frowning, and rubbed his temple. "It says it's very sorry."

"Sorry doesn't get us home, and it doesn't get us paid," Ash said, glaring at the tank. "What do we do to get back to normal space?"

"I don't know," Oliver shrugged. "It's kind of hard to understand it, it's still learning how to communicate."

"Find out what you can," Alex told him. "In the meantime, let's see about finding that data core."

"Are you serious?" Ash asked. "We're stuck on this wreck without a way home, and you want us to act like nothing's changed?"

"Yes, Ash, I want you to act like nothing's changed," Alex said. "Until we find out for sure that we're stuck here, we've got a job to do, and we're going to get it done. Anybody got a problem with that?" She glared at them, and everyone stayed silent. "Good. Get to work. Oliver, talk some more with the squid. Ash, find me a way to the data core. Titus, get back to the _Nemesis_ , make sure it's secure, and stay there until I tell you otherwise. Not a word," she pointed a finger at Titus when he opened his mouth. "I know you're worried about Oliver, which is why Dirk will stay with him and make sure he's all right. Understood?"

"Aye, captain," Titus said.

"Can I make a suggestion?" Henry asked, and Alex turned to him. "Nobody goes anywhere alone," he said when she nodded.

"Yeah, OK, that's a good idea," Alex said. "Dirk and Oliver, you guys are staying here. Ash, you and I and Henry will go get the data core. Teri, you go back to the ship with Titus, see if you can make any sense of things from there."

"Why can't I stay with Oliver?" Titus pouted.

"Because Dirk is a doctor, and if Oliver needs help, he's more likely to need a doctor than a security officer. Do as you're told, Titus." Henry thought Alex sounded tired, but he avoided looking in her direction. He really didn't want to see Cyrus again. He really didn't want to think about what was happening in his head again.

#

"The data core is in there," Ash pointed to the door just ahead of them. "At least that's what the computer is saying."

"Let's go check if the computer is telling the truth, then," Alex said, reaching for the door controls. She pulled back her hand and drew her gun, then opened the door. The room just ahead was dark, the dimly lit panels of the control consoles in the middle of the room the only light.

"Ash, get us some light, will you?" Alex turned on her portable light, sweeping it over the room. "It looks clear, but I don't want to risk anything."

"You worried we're not here alone?" Henry asked.

"I'm worried about Teri's life sign readings," Alex nodded. "I know it's probably just cryo pods or plants, like she said, but it's a big ship, who knows what the hell is on board?"

"Until we turned on the life support systems, there was no atmosphere for a long time," Ash said. "How would anyone survive?"

"We don't know how long the life support was turned off," Alex pointed out. "Maybe they saw us coming and made it look like the ship was deserted."

"Now you're just being paranoid," Ash told her, entering another command on his dataflex. He looked up into the interior of the room and held up a hand dramatically. "And then there was... light," he waved his hand in the air. The lights that came on in the room were weak and flickering, but at least they broke up the darkness a bit.

"Not your best work, but it'll do," Alex said, stepping into the room. "Let's get the core and get the hell out of here, this place gives me the creeps." The room, like the engineering and research sections, was a multi-level construction, tall enough that the highest levels weren't visible from where they were standing. "Feels like we're being watched."

Ash went straight for the main console, his fingers flying over it before he had stopped moving. "Other than the special research section, which is still locked out, I've got access to all the ship's systems, including the logs." He whistled. "This explains all the damage to the exterior," he said, looking up. "They came out of hyperspace in the middle of a solar storm, and the whole ship got fried."

"They'd have had to come out right near a star for that, why would they do that?" Alex walked up to him and started reading the log for herself.

"Maybe Oliver's new friend can shed some light on that," Henry said. "If it can jump the ship, maybe this isn't the first time it's done that."

"Hang on, give me a minute," Ash was pulling up system diagnostics, one after another, until the displays hung in the air around him like a multi-layer curtain. "I guess now we know why the reactor was drained." He scrolled through the displays, finally stopping on one. "This says they set the ship on a course into uncharted space, and programmed the engines to run as long as the reactor would take them, at maximum speed."

"Why would they do that?"

"Here," Ash caught the edge of the display and sent it flying toward Alex. "Read for yourself. I'm going to get the core."

Alex scrolled through the text. "This is the captain's log," she said. "Good job finding it, Ash."

"Does it say anything about what happened?" Henry stood beside her, reading along with her.

"I think this is one of the last entries," Alex pointed. "Listen to this: _This is the last entry in the log of Captain Ingrid von Glass. Our funding has been withdrawn, and we have been ordered to destroy all evidence of the experiments. And yet, these are living creatures, living people! I refuse to order anyone to do what I am not willing to do myself. I have decided to set the ship on an open course into uncharted space. All the subjects are in sleep pods. When the fuel has been almost exhausted, the computer will wake the subjects, give them time to get off the ship and perhaps find a place to live. I realize this is not the ideal solution, but I cannot do anymore for them, not without risking my own life. Doctor Kuppelweiser has already expressed his disappointment with my plan, and I'm sure once we get back, I will face severe repercussions, but I will not have the murder of so many innocents on my hands_." Alex looked away from the log, turning to Henry. "I like her, this captain von Glass," she said.

"She gave them a chance at survival. I wonder if any of them made it."

"I've got the data core," Ash called out from where he'd crawled in under a console. "Now we can go back and try to figure out how to get the hell off this ship and back to normal space."

"Before we leave, can you get me a copy of the captain's logs? As far back as you can go? I'd like to find out what went on here."

"Sure," Ash nodded. "Give me a minute."

"Alex, are you guys going to be long?" Dirk's voice came on the comms. "We've got something."

"We're just about done here," Alex told him. "What's going on?"

"We'll explain when you guys get back. Oliver's still in the tank, but he's on his way out."

"What is he doing in the tank? Dammit, you saw what happened to him the last time."

"Relax, he's fine," Dirk laughed. "He's wearing a respirator, nothing's going to happen."

"Get him out of there as soon as you can," Alex told him. "We'll be there soon."

Ash pulled three dataflexis out of the console and handed them to Alex. "Here, all the logs I could get. Looks like you'll have enough reading material for a few days."

"Get the core and let's go," Alex said.

"All packed and ready to go," Ash patted a pocket on his thigh. "Any time you're ready, cap'n."

Alex led the way out of the room, and within minutes, they were back in the research section, watching Oliver climb down the ladder from the tank entrance. His hair was mussed from when he took off his respirator, and his eyes were bright with excitement.

"It's finally making sense when it talks," he said, sliding into a chair in front of a console. "Before, it was like I was getting whole ideas in my head, now it's more like actual words."

"How the hell is it able to talk to you in the first place?" Ash asked, and Oliver shook his head. "I don't know. It said it's been trying to reach all of us, but I'm the only one who can hear it. And talk back to it."

"So what did it say? Dirk said you had something," Alex said.

"They were experimenting on it," Oliver said, frowning. "Cutting pieces of it out, trying to splice them into people."

"What were they trying to do?"

"You know how I said it's the one who jumped us into hyperspace? That's a natural ability its species has. Well," Oliver shook his head, rubbing at his temple, "some of the members of its species."

"That explains why they were hunted almost to extinction," Alex said.

Oliver nodded. "This one was captured by the people who ran this ship. They knew about the abilities the squids have, and they wanted to give humans the same abilities."

"How does it know all this?"

"The squids are telepathic. The subjects of the experiments were slightly telepathic as well," Oliver said. "It... saw everything that was done to them." He shook his head. "It tried to show me, and believe me, it wasn't pretty.

"Some of them died right away, in horrible pain from being cut up. Some of them didn't develop any abilities at all, other than the passive telepathy, which wasn't of any use to the scientists, so they were killed. And then the ship was set adrift, the subjects who were still alive were put into cry pods, and everyone else left."

"What did it do then?" Ash asked. "Go into hibernation or something?"

"It doesn't tell time the same way we do," Oliver said, "but I think as long as the ship's engines were running, it didn't do anything. It says it slept, I don't know if it was natural or induced. And then when the ship stopped, it woke up, and wanted to leave, but it couldn't get free. So it jumped the ship, trying to get back to its people, before they left. When it came out of hyperspace, it was right into a solar storm. It jumped the ship again, and then the computer woke everyone up, to give them time to get to safety. After that, it tried to catch up to the rest of the squids."

"It didn't make it, did it?" Alex asked.

"It did," Oliver shook his head sadly. "But they didn't want it with them. Said that it was contaminated, that it wasn't one of them anymore. They left it behind."

"What did it do then?"

"Drifted around, jumping in and out of hyperspace, until it got tired, and then it went to sleep. It has no idea how long it slept before we woke it up."

"Oliver, you said it could tell when there were experiment subjects nearby," Alex said. "Can you ask it if there's anyone other than us on board?"

Oliver closed his eyes, and the squid in the tank moved, waving its tentacles around. As everyone watched, Oliver sat in silence, his lips moving soundlessly. When he opened his eyes, they were wide and full of fear.

"We're not alone."

#

"I think I found who we're sharing the ship with," Dirk said, staring around the room he'd just entered. "There's cryo pods, at least a dozen."

"Teri, can you run a life signs scan again, and tell us if we're in the same location as what you were picking up?"

"Looks like it, captain," Teri said over the comms. "What did you find?"

"Cryo pods. Some of them are occupied." Alex walked along the semicircle the pods were arranged in, looking inside. The faces of the people inside were all normal, with no external signs to indicate they were the subjects of strange medical experiments. As she passed one of the pods, she caught motion out of the corner of her eye, and when she turned toward it, she gasped. Tommy Marshall was in one of the pods, a bloody hand pressed against the cover, his mouth moving soundlessly. Alex closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe.

"That explains why the readings are so weak. Can you—" The transmission broke off as a shudder ran through the ship, making the lights flicker.

"What the hell was that? Everyone check in, right now." Alex picked herself up from the floor where she'd fallen, and looked around. The pod she'd seen Tommy in was empty.

"We're fine," Titus said. "Oliver's in the tank, he didn't even feel it."

"The _Nemesis_ is fine, too," Teri said. "We're a little shaken, but it's all good."

"What happened? Ash, anything?"

"It's not good, captain," Ash's voice was shaky, and he coughed. "I think the _Pathos Verdes_ didn't like the jump into hyperspace. We just lost a large part of the aft decks."

The lights flickered again, going out before coming back up again at partial brightness. Alex looked around the room, and frowned at the red lights flashing on many of the cryo pods.

"Looks like we're losing power over here, too," she said. "I don't think the pods are going to last very long." She saw Henry standing in front of one of the pods, staring inside. "Henry? You got something?"

He shook his head, turning to her. "I don't know. There's something weird about this one, you should come and see."

Alex went to him, and looked into the pod. Unlike the others, the pod had two occupants, a man and a child, the little girl clinging to the man, her face buried against his leg.

"Why would they put two people into one pod?" Alex asked. "That's weird." She looked to the other end of the pod section. "There's a vacant one over there, they didn't have to share."

Henry bent to the console, its control light still a steady and reassuring green, and tapped in a command. "This one was activated much later than the rest."

"You think they know something about what happened here?"

"Look at his clothes," Henry pointed, and he was right, the man's clothes didn't match the other people's.

"It looks like a flight suit, sort of. Maybe he's one of the crew who stayed behind? That's probably his kid, he didn't want to leave her alone."

"All right," Alex said. "Dirk, when you're done, head back to the _Nemesis_ , relieve Teri, let her get some sleep. I'll go check on Titus and Oliver, see how they're doing. Wanna come with?" She asked Henry, but he shook his head.

"You go ahead, I'm going to stay here and see if I can get any more out of these consoles."

"Whatever you do, don't try to thaw any of them out," Ash told him over the comms. "I just ran a scan on them, and with the power loss all over the ship, I can't tell if any of them would actually make it through the process."

"I wasn't planning on it," Henry said.

"I'll run a scan on them, see if any of them would actually survive, if we had enough power," Dirk said, starting his work on the far end of the pods.

"Why bother, if we don't have enough power?" Henry asked.

"Because I've got nothing better to do," Dirk shrugged. "And I'm a doctor; if we can save any of them, I want to at least be able to say I tried."

#

"I made him get out of the tank when we lost the aft decks, just in case, but other than that, he's been in there pretty much every minute we're on the ship," Titus said, looking up at the tank where Oliver was floating alongside the squid.

"Has he said anything?"

"Not in so many words," Titus shook his head. "I just get... vague flashes of things, while he's talking to it." He frowned, running his hand through his hair. "It's mostly just reassurances, that he's fine, that it's not going to hurt him, that it doesn't want to hurt us."

"There's a difference between 'doesn't want to' and 'won't'," Alex said. "Look where it's gotten us so far." Titus flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. "Are you all right? Is it—?"

"It's fine," he said, shaking his head. "I'm just not used to it yet. Oliver says not to worry, he's going to try and get it to take us back to normal space."

Alex reached for her comms. "Oliver, can you please come out of there for a moment? I'd like to talk to you."

Oliver floated toward the wall of the tank, pressing his hands against it. "You can talk to me while I'm in here, captain," he said, and Alex could see him smiling behind the oxygen mask. "I don't need to come out there." He drifted a little lower, until he was face to face with Alex. "It doesn't want to be alone, Alex," he said, his voice quieter than before. "It's been alone for so long, and it doesn't think it has a lot of time left..."

"Can it get us back to normal space? Before it—" Alex broke off, looking up at where the squid floated.

"I'm trying to convince it to take us back, but it's determined to go somewhere else first," Oliver said. "I'm not quite sure where it's going, it's just a vague idea, like a familiar place it's been to once, a long time ago."

"That doesn't make sense," Alex frowned. "How can it be a familiar place if it's only been there once?"

"Like I said, it's pretty vague," Oliver said. "While I'm trying to figure that out, could you do something for me, captain?"

"What is it?"

"Find out if you can get it out of here. It's been stuck in this tank for a very long time. Maybe if we can get it free, it'll be more willing to help us?"

"All right," Alex nodded. "I'll see what I can do. How about you? Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine," Oliver said, smiling as one of the squid's tentacles wrapped around him and pulled him back toward it. "It likes me."

"I can tell," Alex told him, grinning despite herself. She watched as the squid bobbed up and down with Oliver in its embrace, Oliver's laughter echoing over the comms.

"You heard the man," she turned to Ash. "See if you can find out anything about this tank. If there's a way we can get the squid out, it may be more inclined to help us."

Ash nodded. "I've been thinking about that," he said. "There has to be a way they got the squid in here..."

"If anyone can figure it out, it's you," Alex told him. She turned back to the tank and froze. Tommy was standing in front of the tank, blood pooling around his feet. He raised his hand and used his bloody fingers to draw a happy face on the wall of the tank.

"Atta girl, Alex," he turned to her and gave her a bloody grin. "Keep them all thinking positive. No point in making them worry."

Alex shut her eyes and turned away from the tank. "If anyone needs me, I'm heading back to the _Nemesis_ ," she said to the room in general. Titus was practically glued to the tank, watching Oliver, and Ash was engrossed in the scrolling code on the display in front of him, and neither one of them bothered to look up as she headed out.

"You shouldn't wander off on your own," Tommy's voice echoed in the narrow crawlspace as she climbed down the ladder. When she glanced down, she saw him leaning against the wall, grinning up at her. "It's not safe."

Alex kept climbing down, trying not to react to Tommy. In the cramped space at the bottom of the ladder, she was close enough to touch him. She kept her eyes straight ahead and kept going, forcing herself not to flinch she he reached out for her and his fingers brushed her sleeve.

"You can't just ignore me, Alex," he called after her. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you! You'll see! Like it or not, you're stuck with me!"

Alex clenched her fists and kept going, not stopping until she reached the loading bay of the _Nemesis_. She fought the urge to run to her quarters and lock herself inside, and headed for medical instead, deliberately not looking around for any signs of Tommy.

She came into medical without knocking, and stumbled to a halt when she saw Henry getting up from the exam table. Henry looked up at her and spoke quietly with Dirk, then walked toward Alex.

"Checking up on me?" He gave her a smile as he squeezed her hand.

"Do I need to be checking up on you?" Alex stepped closer to him, grateful for the physical contact.

"Dirk says I'm fine," Henry told her with a glance at Dirk over his shoulder. "Looks like you're stuck with me for a while longer." He kissed her forehead and pulled back. "I'll leave you to it," he glanced at Dirk.

"Are you going back out there?"

"I thought I'd get some sleep," Henry said. "Unless you need me there?"

"No," Alex shook his head. "Sleep's a good idea. Go, I'll see you later." She kissed him briefly and then watched him leave medical. When she turned to Dirk, she was all serious again. "I need you to check if there's something wrong with me," she said, climbing up on the exam table and lying down.

"What's going on?"

"I'm..." Alex closed her eyes and tried not to think of Tommy's bloody grin. "I'm seeing things. People. Dead people."

Dirk narrowed his eyes. "Did this start before or after we came on board the _Pathos Verdes_?"

"After."

"Have you talked to anybody else about this?" Dirk lowered the scanner over the bed and started the scan.

"No," Alex shook her head.

"Don't move," Dirk told her, not looking up from his console. "You're the fourth person who's come to me about seeing things," he said. "Maybe if you all weren't so damned secretive, you'd have figured out what was going on earlier on."

"Fourth?" Alex pushed the scanner aside and sat up, ignoring Dirk's yelp of protest. "Who else?" When Dirk started to shake his head, she narrowed her eyed. "Don't give me any of that doctor-patient confidentiality crap, Dirk. I'm the captain, I need to know if my crew is being affected.

"Technically, as one of the affected people, you shouldn't even be in charge right now," Dirk told her, pushing her back down on the bed and resuming the scan. "I should relieve you of duty."

"You could try," Alex told him, glaring at the ceiling. "Talk to me, Dirk. Tell me who's affected."

Dirk sighed. "Teri, Ash, and Henry. He's fine, by the way," he added when Alex looked up and opened her mouth to speak. "They've all reported seeing things and people who shouldn't be there, and all of it started after we came on board this miserable ship." The scanner finished, and Dirk slid it back into place, letting Alex sit up. "I've run the same tests on all of you, and there's nothing to indicate there's anything wrong with you. There's some increased activity in your neocortex, but that wouldn't make you hallucinate."

"Have you run the tests on yourself? Titus and Oliver?"

"I haven't done the boys yet, but I'm going to as soon as they get back to the ship."

"I'll call them back in," Alex said, getting up off the bed. "I take it you're fine?"

"My levels of neocortex activity are slightly elevated, but not as high as the rest of you," Dirk said. "And no, I haven't been seeing anything out of the ordinary."

"OK," Alex said. "Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, ma'am," Dirk waved his fingers near his temple in a vague approximation of a salute. Alex glared at him and headed out.

She thought about going to see Henry and talking to him about what was going on, but she needed to take care of her ship first. She headed for the mess hall, and saw Teri sitting in one of the comfy chairs, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands. Grateful for the distraction, Alex sank into a chair beside Teri.

"I thought you were supposed to be sleeping?"

"I don't want to sleep," Teri said, blinking at Alex blearily.

"Bad dreams?"

Teri shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't slept yet. I don't want to risk seeing—" She cut herself off and took a sip of her coffee. Alex waited patiently; it wouldn't work to push Teri to answer, she'd open up herself.

"My grandmother died when I was thirteen," Teri said. "My mother was gone by then, and my dad had never been around, so it was just me and her. She was really sick, in the last stages of Aevin's Fever.

"She wouldn't even _listen_ to the doctors who brought it up," Teri said. Most people, when diagnosed with Aevin's Fever, made prompt arrangements for a visit to a hospice, where, after tidying up any loose ends in their lives, they were given the blessing of a quick and painless death. "Not even when it got bad enough that she spent her days and night screaming in pain." Teri closed her eyes, leaning her head forward to rest her forehead on the rim of the cup. "Have you ever seen anyone in the final stages of Aevin's?"

Alex shook her head. "I've read about it, but no, I've never seen it."

"You should be very glad," Teri told her. "What I saw in the hospital room the day she died... it wasn't my grandmother. It wasn't even a person. She screamed until the very end." Teri put down her coffee cup and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly. "I saw my grandmother last night when I was on the _Pathos Verdes_. She wasn't screaming anymore; she couldn't even talk. It was like she hadn't died, like she just kept wasting away with the fever, like it just kept twisting her body more and more. Dammit, Alex, she's been dead for twenty years!"

"I've been seeing someone who's been dead for seven years," Alex said quietly. "I saw him die, and yet here he is."

"What's happening to us, Alex? What the hell did we get ourselves into?"

Alex sighed, and smiled. "Thank you for not asking what the hell _I_ got us into."

"Yeah, well, don't thank me yet," Teri grumbled. "If we all end up going crazy and try to kill each other, I'm totally blaming it on you."

"Deal," Alex said, getting to her feet. "I haven't... seen anything while I'm on the _Nemesis_ , maybe whatever's causing the hallucinations is too far from the ship, or maybe the ship itself is shielding us somehow."

"You want me to be a guinea pig for you and see if I can sleep, don't you?"

"If you're not willing to do it, I'll find someone else, hell, I'll do it myself. But I can see how tired you are, you can't forcing yourself to stay awake."

"Dirk's already threatened to drug me if I don't get some sleep," Teri grinned. "This isn't actually coffee," she nodded at the mug on the table beside her. It's herbal tea, to help me sleep."

"Good," Alex gave her a smile. "Hopefully we'll find a way to get the squid out of the ship, and maybe then it will get us back to normal space."

"That's a lot to have riding on a whole bunch of hopefullys and maybes," Teri said.

"I know. But we don't have any other options, and I'm not willing to give up just yet." Alex leaned down over Teri and kissed her forehead, tucking a loose strand of hair behind Teri's ear. "Go sleep. I'll let you know when we know something."

#

Henry stood beside Alex, looking into the tank where Oliver communed with the squid.

"How is he doing?"

"I haven't seen him this excited in a long time," Alex said, her voice quiet. "How are you doing?"

"No doubt Dirk told you, I'm fine so far."

"Who did you see?" Alex asked, and Henry glanced sideways at her. "Dirk told me," she clarified.

"About a year before I met you, we were on a mission. The ship was falling apart, and someone had to stay behind so the rest of us could get away. I had every intention of staying, but then one of my men pushed me into the last escape pod and took my place. I watched him get sucked out into space and die in a vacuum, while I sat in the pod and waited for rescue." Henry looked to Alex again and closed his eyes when he saw Cyrus standing beside her, one hand on the back of Alex's neck. "I've been seeing Cyrus all over the ship." He opened his eyes and kept them forward, glued to the tank and the squid floating inside. "What have you been seeing?"

"Tommy," Alex said, her voice cracking on the name. "I thought it was a side effect of the Xocet. But since I'm not the only one seeing things, that raises the question of what's causing these hallucinations."

"Have you talked to Titus and Oliver? Are they seeing things, too?" Henry risked a glance at Alex, and was relieved to see Cyrus was gone.

"Dirk hasn't had a chance to run any tests on them," Alex shook her head. "I'm going to get Oliver out of the tank and send them to Dirk." She reached for her wrist dataflex, then lowered her arm and turned to Henry. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Henry shrugged. "I figured you had enough on your mind without having to worry about when and where my head might explode."

Alex slapped him. "I never want to hear you say that again," she told him. "Ever." Without another word, she walked away.

"Very smooth, Romeo," Cyrus stood beside him, looking at Alex walk away. "You're never going to have a future with her if you keep acting this way." He paused, turning to Henry and looking him over. "Oh, wait, neither one of you is going to have a future."

Henry turned on his heel and walked out of the tank room. He walked down the corridors aimlessly until he found himself standing in front of the bank of cryo pods, staring at the little girl clinging to the soldier.

#

Alex climbed up the ladder to the walkway where Titus sat on the floor beside the airlock door, and sat down beside him.

"Any news?"

Titus shook his head. "He hasn't come out in a while."

"Didn't you ask him?"

"I've been asking, but he hasn't really been saying anything."

Alex tapped her wrist dataflex. "Oliver, I need you out here, please."

"What is it, Alex?" Oliver replied over the comms. "We can talk like this."

"No, we can't," Alex said. "Please, Oliver, I need you to come out of there."

"I'll be right there."

"What's going on?" Titus asked, looking worried. "Did something happen?"

"I'm not sure," Alex shook her head. "Have you seen anything weird while you've been on the ship?"

Titus stared at her. "You mean like everything we've seen while on board so far?"

Alex rubbed her eyes. "No. I know this sounds weird. It would be something, or someone who's not supposed to be here. Someone dead."

"Who's dead?" Oliver stepped out of the airlock, the oxygen mask hanging from his fingers. "What's happened?"

"Alex was just asking me if I've been seeing dead people," Titus said, laughing.

Oliver looked from Titus to Alex, who was definitely not laughing. "You're serious."

Alex nodded. "Four of us have been seeing people who aren't supposed to be there. Well, Ash saw his cat. And Dirk's refusing to step off the _Nemesis_. He doesn't want to get any worse, in case he has to take care of the rest of us."

"I haven't seen anything," Oliver said.

"Neither have I," Titus added. "Maybe it's something... I don't know, maybe it's something unrelated to the ship."

"What, like something we ate?" Alex scoffed. "Come on, we've all been eating the same food, drinking the same liquids, and breathing the same air."

"Exactly," Titus said. "Why would Oliver and I be the only ones unaffected?"

"I have an idea," Oliver said quietly, staring into the tank, where the squid floated near the airlock. He laid a hand on the tank wall and the squid brushed a tentacle over the other side, its suckers sticking to the tank wall, each several times larger than Oliver's hand.

"That's never not going to be creepy," Titus shuddered.

"What's your idea?" Alex shushed Titus. "What are you thinking?"

"Other than me, none of you have been able to communicate with the squid," Oliver said. "And I have a telepathic connection with Titus. Maybe it's something to do with that?"

"Are you saying the squid is making us see all these things?" Alex turned to look at the tank, and ended up staring right into the squid's eyeball. "Why would it do that? Doesn't it know it's hurting us?"

"Maybe it doesn't realize what it's doing," Oliver said, lifting his oxygen mask to his face. "I can ask."

"Are you sure it's a good idea to back in there?" Titus asked, taking hold of Oliver's hand.

"It hasn't hurt me yet," Oliver shook off Titus' hand and opened the airlock door, stepping inside. "Don't worry, Titus. I'll be all right."

The airlock door closed behind him and Oliver floated toward the squid. As Alex and Titus watched, the squid wrapped a tentacle around him, drawing him closer.

"Hey, Alex!" Ash shouted from down below. "I think I've found a way to get the squid out of the ship."

Alex leaned over the railing to look down, and Ash waved his dataflex at her. "I'll be right down." She opened the comms to Oliver, glancing up into the tank. "Oliver, tell your friend we might be able to get it out of the ship. Maybe now it'll be more forthcoming with help?"

"I'll do what I can," Oliver said, waving at her from the squid's embrace.

"Try to get him to come out of the tank soon, will you?" Alex told Titus, and he gave her a nod as she headed for the ladder.

"What have you got?" She asked Ash as he surrounded himself with scrolling displays of code and schematics.

"If I'm reading this right, there's a path from the tank, through the ship, to a large loading bay. I'm pretty sure that unless they built the ship around it, that's how they got it in here. It makes sense that we should be able to get it out the same way.

"This is the most direct path to the loading bay," Ash used a finger to trace a route on the ship schematic. "I'll need to check the route, see if it hasn't been blocked along the way, but that shouldn't take more than a few hours."

"Awesome," Alex said. "What do you need to get it done?"

"I can do it by myself," Ash said, then grinned. "But you're not going to let me go alone, of course."

"Of course," Alex smiled. "Since everyone else is busy, looks like it'll be you and me."

"We'll need envirosuits, just in case," Ash said. "I'm not sure if there's air in all the areas we'll be going through."

#

"Henry, what's going on in there? I've got alarms going off all over the place." Teri's voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the concern in it.

Henry didn't answer. He stood in front of the pod, watching the control panel's lights cycling. Other pods lit up, lights flashing red, more and more alarms chiming in.

"Henry! What the hell?" Dirk rank into the room, eyes wide. "What have you done?"

"You said it yourself," Henry said, not taking his eyes off the pod in front of him. "The rest of them would have died anyway. Radiation poisoning isn't a kind way to die. I wouldn't have wished it on them."

"So, what, you're simply doing them a kindness, putting them out of their misery?" Dirk moved from pod to pod, scanning them.

"The ship is falling apart, Dirk," Henry said. "They would have died anyway."

"We might have been able to help them!"

"You know as well as I do that wouldn't have been possible," Henry said. "Now, why don't you focus on the two people we actually _can_ save? We should get them out of the pod and into medical."

"Don't tell me how to do my job," Dirk snapped, but moved to help Henry remove the lid of the pod, and tilt the interior of the pod horizontally, turning it into a stretcher.

"How are we going to get it back to the _Nemesis_? We can't carry them down the ladder."

"It's anti-grav," Henry pointed out. He slid the stretcher out, detaching it from the pod, and it floated a couple of feet off the floor. "All we have to do is tow it."

"That still doesn't get us down the access shaft," Dirk bent over the stretcher, scanning its sleeping occupants. "They'll be out for a couple of hours still, I guess we'll figure something out. Let's get them out—" He stumbled as the ship shook, falling to one knee beside the stretcher. "Let's get them out before the ship falls apart around us."

Henry held out a hand to help Dirk stand up, and Dirk accepted. Moving carefully but quickly, they moved the stretcher out of the cryo chamber, leaving behind a discordant chorus and flashing lights of the alarms. One by one, the pods failed and the alarms ceased, leaving behind only solid red lights of flatlined heart rates on the displays. Henry looked back over his shoulder and pretended not to see Cyrus, standing in the middle of the room, clapping slowly as he stared into Henry's eyes.

"I see you've found a way to kill someone on this job as well. Very good, Henry. You mustn't stop practicing."

When they reached the tank room, Titus watched them go through the room from his seat by the airlock door; Henry could see Oliver inside the tank, the squid wrapped around him. Titus' eyes widened at the sight of the stretcher and its occupants, but he didn't say anything. Henry looked around for Alex, but she wasn't in the room, and he decided to wait until he was back on board the _Nemesis_ before telling her what he'd done. Not that he had any idea how he was going to justify his actions.

When they reached the access shaft, they ended up strapping the people on the stretcher down, and turning the anti-grav up as high it would go, so the stretcher would fall slowly. Dirk waited at the bottom of the ladder to catch it, and Henry handled it from above. It took a while to get done, but they managed.

As they neared the _Nemesis_ , Dirk turned to Henry. "I hope you're not expecting me to help you explain this to Alex."

"I didn't think you would, no," Henry shook his head. "I'll manage, thanks."

"Good," Dirk said. "I'll take care of the medical side of things, you take care of the captain. Hopefully you won't have too much trouble with that," he grinned, and Henry found himself grinning back.

"What the hell did you guys do?" Teri greeted them in the loading bay, glaring from where she stood on the stairs.

"Don't look at me, sweetheart," Dirk held out his hands in a gesture of surrender. "This is all Henry's doing."

When Teri turned her glare on Henry, he nodded. "He's right," he shrugged. "This was all me."

"I can't _wait_ to hear you explain this to Alex," Teri told him, eyeing the stretcher. "Get them to medical," she said to Dirk. "And for fuck's sake, stay put. Who knows what kind of trouble you'll get into if you go back out there."

"Is Alex around?" Henry asked, and Teri shook her head.

"She and Ash are scouting the route for getting the squid out of the ship. She's hoping that this will bribe the squid into taking us back into normal space."

"It had better," Dirk said, pushing the stretcher in front of him. "Otherwise we might as well kiss our asses goodbye, because we're fucked."

At Dirk's words, Henry forced himself not to look around the loading bay for Cyrus. So far, he hadn't seen him anywhere on the _Nemesis_ , and he wasn't about to go tempting fate.

#

"Good news, everyone," Ash announced, stepping into the mess hall and unbuckling his helmet. "We found a way out for the squid. And we got a look at that room we found on the first day, the one with all the samples." He dropped his helmet to the floor and threw himself into one of the comfy chairs. "You'd have liked it, Dirk. Lots of freaky shit in jars for you to study."

"If you behave, I might even let you go in there and take a look for yourself," Alex said, coming in after Ash, her helmet already off and dangling from her hand. "But you have to be on really good behavior."

"I'm not the one whose behavior you need to worry about," Dirk said, looking up from his food.

Alex frowned. "Who is it, and what have they done now?"

"Go down to medical and check for yourself," Dirk told her, stuffing his mouth full of food and refusing to say anymore.

Alex glanced back at Ash, who was taking off his suit. "Get Titus suited up, and head down to the tank room. We'll get started as soon as you're ready. She headed for medical, telling herself that she wasn't running down the corridor, merely walking at a fast pace, and burst through the door, her heart in her throat when she Teri standing over someone lying on the bed at the far end of the room. When Henry came into view from the other side, she let out a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank god," she breathed, coming closer to him. "I thought maybe you'd—"

"I'm fine," Henry said. "But I think you're going to be pissed off at me." He stepped aside, looking down at the bed.

Teri cleared her throat. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go get a cup of coffee. I'll be back in a few minutes to take the next shift," she told Henry. She didn't bother waiting for an answer before leaving.

"Is that..." Alex came closer, looking down at the soldier she'd seen in the cryo pod before. "Henry, what did you do?"

"They were the only ones who had a chance of surviving," Henry said.

"Them? The child is here, too?" Alex looked around and spotted the second bed, padded with blankets and pillows to make it more comfortable for the little girl.

"I couldn't just leave them there to die."

"I hope you haven't woken them just to face death again," Alex said. "We haven't got any guarantee that we'll actually get back to normal space."

"I know, but I had to try. There's something about them..."

"All right. We'll figure something out. First, we need to get off this ship and into normal space."

"Did you find anything? Can we get the squid out?"

"Yeah," Alex nodded. "It might be slow going, but I think we can manage." She brushed the sleeping girl's hair back. "Hopefully they'll manage, too."

"Alex, I—"

"Captain, we're ready to start," Ash told them over the comms. Titus is suited up and in the tank with Oliver already, and the squid's looking anxious to go as well."

"How the hell would you know what the squid's feeling?"

"I'm just assuming the best, OK? For all I know it's getting hungry, and Titus and Oliver will make a tasty hors d'oeuvre."

"Thanks, Ash, that makes me feel so much better," Titus grumbled.

"We're on our way," Alex told Ash. "Everyone stay put until I get there."

Alex and Henry broke into a run, and they were both out of breath when they reached the tank room.

"What's happening?" Alex asked, looking up at the tank. The squid floated near the airlock, Titus held in one of its tentacles, the tip of another sliding over him.

"It's getting to know him," Oliver told her, waving from the tank.

"Can you tell it to hurry up, please? This is weirding me out," Titus groaned.

"Just hold still and let it do its thing," Alex told him. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can be on our way."

"I checked the bottom of the tank," Oliver told her. "There's a way to open it, but I think it has to be done from the outside."

"I've got the controls right here," Ash said. "Just tell me when you're ready, and you'll have a clear path all the way to the outside."

"Give us a couple more minutes, and we'll be on our way."

The squid released Titus, but kept him close by, one tentacle loosely wrapped around him. Oliver laughed when Titus protested.

"It likes you," he said, "and it doesn't want you to leave."

"OK, I promise not to leave, but can it please let go of me?"

Oliver laughed again, put a hand on the squid's head, and closed his eyes. "It's trying to protect you," he said. "It says you're small and you could get hurt if you bump into something." He was laughing so hard he could barely speak.

Titus grumbled, but didn't try to wriggle out of the squid's embrace anymore.

"All right, everybody ready?" Ash called out.

"Go ahead," Oliver said, and flashed Ash a thumbs up before pushing off the wall and using his suit's mini jets to descend down into the tank. The squid followed, taking an unhappy-looking Titus with it.

"We won't be able to see them the whole way through, but if you want, you can go back to the big storage room, they'll have to pass through it anyway," Ash told Alex.

"You two wrap up what you need to do here, and then head back," Alex said to Ash and Dirk. "Get as much information off the computers, doesn't matter what it is. If you can make a copy of it, do it."

"I've been copying data to the _Nemesis_ for the last eight hours," Ash told her. "Don't worry, I've put it all into a secured system, so if any of it is dangerous, it won't infect the main computers."

"Good work," Alex said, then turned to Henry. "Come on, let's go."

Henry led the way to the storage room, letting Alex go in first without offering any commentary. When he joined her inside, she was standing at the window, staring open-mouthed at the enormous chamber beyond. When Henry came to stand beside her, she let out a long breath.

"Holy shit," she said, and Henry laughed. "I can't imagine how many experiments they must have done to get this many samples."

"I don't think Oliver's squid friend was the only one," Henry said, picking up the sample jar he'd retrieved on his first visit to the room. "This looks like a young specimen. And look here," he pointed at something inside the jar, "it looks like part of it's been cut away."

"Oliver said the squid told him they were doing experiments on people, trying to splice them with the squids," Alex looked away from the jar in Henry's hand and out at the vast storage chamber. "Guess they had to get their materials from somewhere." She had a sudden thought. "I wonder what Carrow wants with the data core."

"If the squids weren't all extinct, I'd say maybe he was trying to start the experiments up again," Henry said. "Many ships are too small for a jump drive, and the gates are expensive to build. I'm sure he wouldn't have much trouble finding a market for pilots who could take their ships anywhere they wanted to, just with the power of their minds."

"Maybe he's got a couple of squids stashed away somewhere? I don't know anything about them, so I have no idea how hard it would be to breed them in captivity, but what if he's got something already in place?"

Henry fell silent, and they stood together, staring out of the window. A couple of minutes later, Titus' called out over the comms.

"It's a shame you guys are in there," he said, and Alex looked to the far side of the chamber. Sure enough, there was the squid, and she could just barely make out the lights on Oliver and Titus' suits. "The view from in there is mindboggling, but from here, it's incredible."

"It's beautiful," Oliver breathed.

"As long as you don't look too closely at what's in the containers," Alex muttered. She watched the squid slowly float across the room, and gave the men a wave when they were in sight.

Another jolt shook the ship, and Alex stumbled. Henry caught her before she fell, but her hand landed right in the middle of one of the consoles. Red lights started flashing in the room and a display came up over the window, the words EMERGENCY PURGE scrolling across over and over.

"Guys, what's going on?" Oliver called out, yelping. "Ow, cut that out!"

Alex swiped the display aside to look out the window. The containers lining the walls of the spherical chamber began to move, floating out into the middle of the chamber, surrounding the squid from all sides. Alex watched the squid start to panic, its tentacles lashing out at the containers, accompanied by Oliver and Titus' increasingly loud cries. The squid was close enough to the window now that she could see the men clearly. What she saw made her press her hands to the glass in a futile attempt to get their attention.

"Oliver, what are you doing?"

"I can't talk to it like this," he said, his voice ragged. As Alex watched, he stripped off the gloves of his suit, leaving them floating on the cords that attached it to the rest of the suit. Once the gloves were off, he unlatched his helmet, leaving it floating free.

"Oliver, what are you doing? There's no atmosphere in there, you'll die!"

"I've got my mask," he said, his voice muffled as he slipped the respirator on. "It's OK, Alex, I've got this."

"For god's sake, Oliver, be careful!" There was nothing for Alex to do but watch helplessly as Oliver tried to calm the squid, his hands laid on its head just above one of its giant eyes. It seemed to be working, the squid's motions slowing down and growing calmer.

"It's angry," Oliver said. "It saw what was in the containers, it saw what they did to its kin... It can't understand why someone would do something so horrible to another being."

"Tell it all the people who hurt its kind are gone," Alex said. "Remind it that we're going to set it free, that we did all of this despite the fact that it stranded us in hyperspace, and despite the fact that it hurt us with the hallucinations."

"As long as you do it in a way that doesn't piss it off more," Titus said, and Alex could see him struggling to get out of its hold. "Also, could you ask it to loosen its grip a bit? I feel like my insides are about to get liquefied."

"Oh no," Oliver breathed, moving his hands over the squid's head in a slow circular motion. "Come on, you can make it, just a little bit longer..."

"What's wrong?"

"It's dying," Oliver said, his voice cracking on the word. "It's very sorry for all the harm it's done, but it's—" The squid convulsed then, its tentacles thrashing around. The tentacle around Titus loosened and he was sent flying across the room, limbs flailing.

"Titus! Your jets!" Henry called out. "Use your jets before you hit the wall!"

Titus recovered just in time to avoid hitting the wall, the pointy ends of the brackets which had held the specimen containers mere inches from the faceplate of his helmet. He used the jets to go back to the squid, which had stopped moving almost entirely.

"Oliver! Where are you? Alex, where the hell is he?"

"I don't know," Alex told him, straining to make out details. The specimen jars floating around the squid blocked her view of it, and she couldn't see Oliver anywhere. "We need to get rid of these containers somehow."

"The only way to do that is to vent the chamber, and we can't do that, because Oliver isn't wearing his helmet," Titus reminded her.

"I know that. But the containers are smaller, they'd go first. We'd have time to seal the airlock before anything happened to the squid."

"No," Titus told her. "I'll go in closer and see if I can find him."

"Be careful," Alex said. "Please, be careful."

"I will."

For what seemed like an interminably long time, there was nothing from Titus, and the squid drifted in such a way that it was facing away from Alex and Henry. Alex reached for Henry's hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly. Henry returned the squeeze, bumping his shoulder into hers. Finally, when Alex thought she wouldn't be able to take it anymore, the light from Titus' suit appeared over the hump of the squid's head. Alex leaned forward to see better, and saw that Titus was dragging Oliver with him.

"Shit, he's not moving," Henry said.

"Ash, find me a way out of here," Titus called over the comms. "What's the fastest way out of this room? Hurry!"

"I'm opening a door for you," Ash told him. "Alex, he's going to come in just outside the big room you're in."

"We're on our way," Alex said, already running out the door. "Tell Dirk to meet us there, Oliver's hurt."

When Alex and Henry reached the airlock, Titus and Oliver were just coming into the hallway. Titus carried Oliver out and gently laid him on the floor in the corridor, pulling off Oliver's oxygen mask and wiping the blood off his face.

"Is he breathing?" Alex went down to her knees beside them.

Titus nodded. "I think he's just unconscious."

"Are these sucker marks?" Alex ran her fingers along the discolored lines on Oliver's suit.

"Yeah. There's some on his skin, too," Titus lifted one of Oliver's hands, and the line there was an angry red welt. Another line crossed Oliver's face, breaking off where his mouth and nose had been covered by his oxygen mask.

"What happened out there, Titus?" Alex asked. "We lost sight of you."

"It had him wrapped up tight, I had to pry the tentacle off him," Titus grimaced. "If he's right about it not wanting to hurt any of us, maybe it was protecting him?"

"Let me take a look at him," Dirk said, coming into the room. He'd brought his medical kit, and he ran the scanner over Oliver. "He's breathing, and he's not hurt," he said, looking up. "How long has he been unconscious?"

"I don't know," Titus said, shaking his head. "I lost track of him in all the flailing about the squid was doing."

"Why's his nose bleeding?" Alex asked.

"As far as I can tell, it's nothing serious," Dirk said. "Essentially, he's fine, he just needs to wake up."

"If you guys stop fretting over me and give me some room," Oliver said quietly, "I can tell you what happened." He was barely able to finish speaking before Titus had him up off the floor and enveloped in a fierce hug.

"Don't ever do that to me again," Titus said, clinging to him. "Ever."

"Titus, let him talk," Alex said, patting Titus' shoulder. "Come on, give him some room to breathe." Titus let go, but held on to Oliver's hand, clutching it tightly.

"It was so angry," Oliver started. "There were hundreds of them in those containers, cut up and mutilated." He sounded angry himself, clenching the hand Titus wasn't holding into a fist. "I tried to calm it down, but I couldn't. So I tried to tell it that it had to calm down, so it could get us back home."

"Didn't go over very well, did it?" Henry asked, and Oliver shook his head.

"It wanted to know why it should help us, when our kind had done so much harm to its kind. What was the price of a few lives compared to practically a whole species? And then it stopped, and pulled me close. I felt it in my head, it was like it was actually in my mind. It said 'forgive me, I didn't know' and then it wrapped me up in its tentacle."

"That's where these came from, I guess," Alex pointed to the sucker marks on Oliver's suit.

"Yeah," Oliver said, raising a hand to rub along the welt on his face. "It doesn't hurt, though." He fell quiet, until Titus squeezed his hand.

"What happened then?"

"It said that I was like it, and that's why I can talk to Titus in his thoughts."

"What does that mean, you're like it? Was it talking about the telepathy?"

"That's what I thought, too. I asked it, but it said no, it meant that I was like it and its people."

"So, what, you're part squid?" Dirk stared at Oliver. "How exactly would that work? I mean, you don't _look_ like you're part squid." He looked from Titus to Alex, raising an eyebrow. "You guys have seen him naked, anything we should know about?"

"Knock it off, Dirk," Alex jabbed him with her elbow. She turned back to Oliver, and frowned.

"Your nose is bleeding again," she said, and he wiped at the blood with his hand. "I think we should get you back to the _Nemesis_. We can handle the squid from here."

"No," Oliver shook his head. "I promised it I'd see it out of the ship, and I'm going to keep my promise." He pulled his gloves, sealing them to the suit. "But I'm going to need another helmet, I don't know where mine is."

"Oliver, you can't go back out there," Alex told him. "We don't know what it did to you, you could be hurt."

"I promised, Alex," he said, deadly serious. He got to his feet and picked up Titus' helmet, sliding it on. "I'll be OK."

"At least wait until we can get a second suit and send someone else in with you," Alex pleaded, but Oliver shook his head. He pulled away from Titus, who had grabbed his hand, and stepped toward the airlock.

"Do you guys hear that?" Dirk blinked, looking around. "It sounds like—"

"What's with the singing?" Teri called out over the comms. "Are you guys playing music down there?"

"Wait, you all hear it?" Oliver stopped in his tracks and turned back to them.

"What do you mean, do we all hear it?" Alex asked. "Of course we all hear it. What is it?"

"I think it's the squid," Henry said.

"I guess it finally figured out how to communicate with the rest of us," Alex said. "Because we're all hearing it in our heads." She held up her wrist dataflex for everyone to see. "Look, other than us and the noises we're making, there are no other sounds on the ship."

"It's beautiful," Titus said, his voice quiet. He turned to Oliver. "Is this what it's like talking to it?"

"Not quite," Oliver said. "But I'm glad you guys can hear it now."

"I'm certainly glad it doesn't come with any more horrifying hallucinations," Teri said, and Alex shuddered. She resolutely kept her eyes on Henry, pointedly not looking around for any signs of Tommy. Henry stared back at her, not breaking eye contact as they listened to the otherworldly sounds of the squid's song.

Oliver abruptly turned and ran back to the observation room, pounding his hands against the window.

"No! Please, no, not like this! Don't do this!"

"Oliver, what's going on?" Alex pulled Oliver away from the wall, motioning for Titus to help her control him.

"It's _dying_ ," Oliver told her, going slack in Titus' arms. "It's dying right now, and it's not going to be able to help us get back home!"

They watched the squid move slowly in the chamber outside, turning to face them. The song grew louder in their heads, its tones beautiful and soothing. When Alex looked around the room, everyone was smiling.

"Hey, is it... glowing?" Titus leaned forward, resting his hands on the glass. "Oliver, why is the squid glowing?"

"I don't know," Oliver shook his head. "It won't talk to me anymore."

"Look," Dirk pointed, and everyone crowded near the window. The glow coming from the squid was getting brighter, until it was bright enough that they had to shield their eyes.

"What's going on, Oliver?" Alex asked. She had to shout to be heard over the music.

"I have no idea." The squid's song grew even louder, and Oliver clapped his hands over his ears, even though it did him no good.

Alex squinted at Oliver and even in the bright light, she could see his nose was bleeding. She started to move towards him and then the light went from blindingly bright to an explosion of colors. When Alex blinked the stars out of her eyes, she saw that the squid was gone, replaced by a cloud of sparkles floating all over the storage chamber.

"Could someone please tell me what just happened?" Dirk rubbed his eyes.

"I think the squid just exploded," Titus said, going to Oliver and wrapping an arm around him. "Come on, sit down over here," he led Oliver to sit against the far wall, and wiped the blood from his face.

"Did you just say the squid exploded?" Teri asked, and Alex reached for her comms.

"We'll get back to you, Teri," she said. "Ash, finish what you're doing there and get back to the _Nemesis_. We'll be there shortly, too." She closed the comms and turned to Dirk. "Check on Oliver, make sure he's OK. And when we get back to the ship, run whatever tests you need to, find out what happened to him."

"You don't need to do that," Oliver said, his voice a little shaky. He gently pushed Titus' hands away and got to his feet. "It knew it wouldn't last long enough to get us back home, that's why it grabbed me." He pointed out into the sparkling cloud, the sparkles growing larger now. "This is how they reproduce," he said. "When an old one dies, young ones are born from it."

"Can they get us back home?" Alex asked. "Because as fascinating as all of this is, it's still not getting us anywhere."

Oliver shook his head. "They're too young, they don't know how."

"So we're fucked, then."

"We're not," Oliver said. "Before it died, the squid showed me how to navigate hyperspace, the way it does."

"That means that—"

"I can get us home," Oliver nodded. "It's going to take a while, I'm going to need to take it slow to get the hang of things, but yeah, I can get us home." He turned to look at the still-growing baby squids outside. "We have to take them with us, though."

"How exactly are we supposed to do that?" Alex looked out at the swarm; it filled the enormous chamber almost entirely, and the squids were getting larger by the minute. "They're not going to fit inside the _Nemesis_."

"We just have to lead them away from the _Pathos Verdes_ ," Oliver explained. "The ship is falling apart, and if they don't leave, they'll be hurt." He tapped his temple and smiled. "Now that I have the knowledge, I can make them follow us."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with my ship and my navigator being used as bait for a bunch of space squids," Alex said.

"We'll be fine," Oliver said. "You'll see."

"Uh, guys," Ash came on the comms, sounding out of breath. "You should probably get out of there as soon as possible. The _Pathos Verdes_ is losing structural stability."

"We're on our way," Alex told him. "Come on, guys, let's get the hell out of here." She let the way out of the room, heading back to the _Nemesis_. "Ash, open the outer doors from the storage chamber, let the baby squids out."

"Did you say baby squids?" Ash and Teri asked together.

"We'll explain later," Alex told them, breaking into a run as the ship shook again. "Be ready to take us out of the docking bay as soon as we get back."

#

The transparency on the overhead hull in the hydroponics bay was turned up to maximum. It was made of the same nanocrystalline MSU that the squid's tank had been made of. When the ship was docked planet-side, the panel could be used to let in sunlight to help Teri's garden grow better.

Alex stared up at the see-through hull. It wasn't stars that she saw, but a kaleidoscope-like field of shifting colors. The baby squids clinging to the hull of the _Nemesis_ sparkled, throwing multi-colored lights into the bay.

"I think they're getting bigger," she said to Oliver as he floated past her. "How is this not weirding you out, having them glommed onto the ship?" He spun in the zero-gravity of the room and turned to her.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Maybe it's because I'm part squid?"

"That's the other thing," Alex said. "How are you not freaking out over that?"

"What use would it be to freak out?" Oliver asked. "It's not like I can change it."

"What did Dirk say when he ran the tests?"

"He said there's some patterns in my DNA that he's never seen before, and that aren't in any databases. And when he compared them to what he got out of the _Pathos Verdes_ computers, he found similarities to stuff they'd taken from the squids." Oliver reached the transparent ceiling of the room and laid his hand on it. As he trailed his fingers over the panel, the squids on the outside shifted with his motion, so he was leaving trails of colors behind.

"I've got a theory, though. When the ship was set adrift, they left a bunch of the experiment subjects on board, right? And the squid said that when it jumped the ship into the path of a storm, the computer automatically revived them so they could evacuate. Maybe they eventually found a place to settle, and that's where my people come from?"

"That would mean that the population of Casadia Archele is descended from the space squids," Alex said, and Oliver nodded.

"Or at least the royal family, if what the ambassador said is true, and I'm one of them."

"You're going to go with him, when we get back home, aren't you?"

"I'm thinking about it," Oliver said.

"Which means that if you decide to go, I'm going to lose my navigator and my security officer," Alex said. "Because let's face it, Titus will never stay behind if you go."

Oliver smiled lightly. "I've been trying to decide how to talk to you about that."

"It might be Teri you talk to," Alex said, and Oliver turned to look at her.

"Are you leaving the _Nemesis_ to her?"

"I'm thinking about it," she said. "Things are... complicated."

"If you need someone to talk to..." Oliver said, and Alex gave him a smile.

"Thanks," she said. "I've got to go and see how things are with everyone, are you going to be OK here?"

"Go ahead," Oliver told her. "I'm just gonna stay here and float for a bit longer. I should be able to try something tonight. We won't go far, but we'll be on our way."

"Take your time," Alex said. "You're our only hope of getting home, nobody's going to rush you." Using the handholds on the wall by the exit, she headed toward the floor and out into the corridor. With the ship unable to go anywhere, everyone on the ship was taking the opportunity to rest, which meant most areas of the ship were quiet and empty. As Alex walked past the room the crew used as a gym, she heard grunts of exertion and the thuds of body parts hitting the mat. She paused briefly, almost reaching up to open the door, but then she kept walking. Whoever it was, they deserved to have an uninterrupted workout.

She kept going to the bridge, where Teri had taken a watch. Alex walked up to stand beside the captain's chair where Teri was sitting.

"Are we still moving?"

"Yeah," Teri nodded. "We could go faster if we brought up the engines, but I figured since we don't know how long it'll take us to get home, we should probably conserve fuel."

"Good idea," Alex said. "Oliver says he'll be able to try tonight. Something about wanting to get his brain used to the whole thing."

"Good," Teri said. "No offense to you or your choices of jobs, but I'm really sick of this ship and this job and—" She broke off when an alarm went off. Alex went to Ash's console, and put up a display of the ship.

"It's not us," she said. "I was worried that maybe the squids got in there somewhere—"

"Bet you never thought you'd be saying that about your own ship," Teri laughed.

"No kidding," Alex agreed. "Look, it's the _Pathos Verdes_ ," she pointed to the display. The larger ship's silhouette was lit up with several red flashing lights, slowly spreading to envelop the whole ship. "This looks like structural failure, all over the place."

"Hang on, let's get a better view," Teri said, fingers flying over her console. The main display changed, showing a view of the real _Pathos Verdes_.

"Hey, everybody, we're about to get a show," Alex said over the comms. "Anyone who wants to see it, come on up to the bridge."

"I'm a little busy with my patients," Dirk grumbled. "I'll take a pass."

"How are they?"

"Asleep," Dirk said. "I'm weaning them off the sedatives, they should be waking up tomorrow."

"So if they're asleep, what are you busy with?" Teri asked, giving Alex a grin.

"Let me know if something happens that actually requires my attention," Dirk snapped, and the connection to medical went dead.

Alex and Teri looked at each other and burst out laughing. They were still laughing when Ash came in. Alex looked behind him, but he was alone.

"Just you, then?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Oliver's still in zero-g, and Titus and Henry are sparring."

"Oh, shit," Alex said. She moved to the door, then shook her head. "No, I'm not going to rush down there. They're grown men, they can take care of themselves."

"Theoretically," Teri said.

"So what's the show you said we were gonna get?" Ash asked, and Teri pointed at the view of the _Pathos Verdes_. "The alarms just went off all over the place, and there's structural failures all over the place."

"It's falling apart," Ash said, pulling up schematics of his own. "Look at this, the hull's buckled in several places. And the reactor is—" He didn't get a chance to finish. The shockwave from the explosion shook the _Nemesis_ , but it was weak enough that no damage was done. The explosion itself was a fantastic light show, several small explosions following the main one in a chain reaction.

Once the explosion faded, Alex quietly pulled up Henry's location on the computer. "I'll see you guys later," she said, heading for the door. "If I'm not back by the time Oliver gets here, let me know."

"Will do, cap'n," Teri said, sitting in the captain's chair. It was a good look for her, Alex thought.

She headed back to the living area, and didn't bother knocking on Henry's door, just used her captain's code to open his door and walk straight in. Henry stood in front of the small sink, wiping his face clean with a wet cloth, the sink streaked with blood from the cloth.

"What the fuck did you do?" Alex asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I let Titus beat me up," Henry shrugged.

"Why the hell would you do that?"

"It seemed like the best way to shut him up with the constant sniping and snide comments," Henry shrugged.

Alex stared at him, then reached for the wet cloth to wipe the rest of the blood off his face. When she was done, she closed in on him, walking him backwards until his back hit the wall, then leaned forward and did her best to stick her tongue down his throat. She could still taste the coppery tang of his blood, and she tangled her fingers in the folds on his shirt.

When Henry grabbed her and turned them around so that her back was up against the wall and his thigh pressed between her legs, Alex went limp and loose against the wall, Henry's hands on her waist holding her up while she threw back her head and made noises that had Henry leaning forward and tonguing the bite mark on her shoulder, then digging his teeth in again. When he broke the skin, Alex keened, and Henry made quick work of their clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor while he and Alex tumbled to the bed.

"This isn't fair," Alex said, struggling for breath as laid her on the bed and started to cover her with kisses. "You're supposed to be in trouble for getting into a fight with Titus."

"We didn't get into a fight," Henry said, running his tongue over the bite mark on Alex's shoulder. "He invited me to spar with him, and I let him win."

"You don't win in sparring," Alex pointed out, arching into Henry, and getting rewarded by his breath stuttering against her skin. His hands slid down her sides, nails scratching over her ribs, fingers spreading over her hips. Henry rose up above her and used his knee to spread her legs. "Stop that," Alex told him as he traced the insides of her thighs with his fingers. "I'm trying to yell at you."

"You can yell later," Henry promised and leaned down.

#

Alex sat beside the bed holding the soldier and the little girl, watching them sleep, while Dirk finished running the latest battery of tests. Dirk had told her both his patients had already woken up once, which was when the little girl refused to stay in a bed of her own and crawled in with the soldier, proclaiming that he was the only one who could keep her safe. She'd identified herself as Emily ("don't tell anyone I have a name, daddy says it's a secret!") before drifting off to sleep again. The soldier, Callis Tor, had spent a bit more time awake, asking clear-headed and coherent questions about where he was and what had happened.

"I've already met the doctor," a sleepy voice said from beside him. "Who are you?"

Alex turned to the bed and was greeted by a pair of hazel eyes staring up at him from above a friendly smile. The soldier sat up, taking care not to disturb Emily, and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at Henry curiously.

"I'm Alex," she said, returning his smile.

The soldier looked around the room, wrinkling his nose. "I don't suppose you'd know who I'd need to talk to about getting out of here?"

"Dirk says you and the girl are both fine, and there's nothing wrong with you that we need to worry about. As for who you'd need to speak to, that'd be me."

"You're the captain of this ship?" He got to his feet and came closer to her chair. Alex got to her feet and held out her hand.

"Captain Alex Porter," she introduced herself properly.

"Callis Tor, ma'am," he said, shaking her hand. "You can call me Cal," he added, stepping closer and rising on his toes to kiss her.

Alex found herself kissing him back, long enough that he wrapped a hand around the back of her head, pulling her down towards him. When his other hand slid down her back to cup her ass, Alex pushed him away, stepping back and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"My apologies, captain," Cal said, failing to look apologetic at all. "It isn't everyday that a man gets a second chance at life. It felt like a little celebration was in order."

"That's what he said to me when he groped my ass," Dirk said from where he stood in the door. "I'm waiting to see how many people he can pull that on."

Cal laughed a ridiculous sounding giggle, which made Alex laugh in turn. Cal shook his head.

"Excuse me, I need to—" He clapped his hands over his mouth and bolted from the room.

Dirk looked after him, and winced at the sounds of retching coming from the next room. "After-effects of prolonged cryo sleep. He'll be fine in a few days."

"Can we move him into a room of his own, or would you prefer to have him here for a while longer?"

"I don't need to watch over him every minute of the day," Dirk shrugged. "As long as he lets me know if he starts feeling funky or something, he can be on his own."

"What about the girl?"

"I need to talk to you about her," Dirk said. "There's something weird about her DNA."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she's not entirely human. You know those scans I ran on Oliver, and the weird DNA fragments?"

"The squid DNA, yeah," Alex nodded.

"If I compared the amount of squid DNA in the two of them, she could be his great-great-great-great grandmother."

Alex looked over at Emily, sleeping curled around a pillow. "So, what, she's one of the experiments?"

"Looks like it," Dirk nodded. "I think you should have a talk with Cal, find out how he ended up sharing a pod with her."

"I opened her cryo pod by accident," Cal said from the door. He yawned, long and wide, and blinked sleepily. "Why am I still tired, by the way?" He asked Dirk. "I slept for a hundred years or so, shouldn't I be well rested?"

"It's an after-effect of the cryo sleep," Dirk said. "I can give you something if you want."

"What do you mean, you opened her cryo pod by accident?" Alex said.

"I found the ship drifting through space, torn up and venting atmosphere. My own ship was damaged, so I came on board to see if I could salvage enough materials to repair it. Turned out I couldn't. I found the cryo pods, and tried to run tests on the empty ones, to see which ones were still functional." Cal came into the room and sat down on the edge of his bed. Emily immediately moved toward him, taking hold of his hand and clutching it to her.

"I figured I could set a distress beacon, go into a pod, and wait in there to be rescued. When I woke her up instead, she ran, scared out of her mind. I..." He trailed off, and shook his head, as if he'd changed his mind about what he was going to say. "Took me three days to convince her I wasn't going to hurt her. And then my ship sort of exploded, and took the distress beacon with it.

"After that, there wasn't much to do but stick myself in a pod and hope someone would find me before the systems ran out of juice and took me with it. I tried to put Emily into a separate pod, but once she knew I wouldn't hurt her, she wouldn't let me leave her alone for more than a few minutes." He glanced at the sleeping girl, holding onto his hand, and smiled. "She's a good kid, though. Wicked smart. I'm pretty sure she can do stuff with her brain, too."

#

Oliver sat at his console, staring at the star charts in front of him. He closed his eyes, and Alex tightened her grip on the armrests of her seat. If this worked, they would be on their way back home, and whatever happened next, she would at least have the satisfaction of having gotten her crew back home safely.

Everyone but Henry was on the bridge—Henry took a shift down in medical, watching over Cal and Emily, who'd begged and pleaded with Cal not to leave her behind. She'd only stopped crying when Cal agreed to stay with her. Dirk promised to release her from medical in another couple of days, wanting to run more tests on her and monitor her condition as she recovered from cryo sleep.

Oliver lifted his head, not opening his eyes.

"I'm ready," he said, and Alex heard several people all around the bridge take deep breaths and hold them. Alex held her breath as well when she felt the ship vibrate slightly as Oliver brought the engines on line.

"Teri, can you drop a beacon to mark our position? It'll help us measure our progress, at least for a while." Oliver asked quietly, and Teri nodded, doing as he asked.

As everyone watched and waited, Oliver took hold of the controls, steering the ship. To look at the hyperspace swirling around them, it didn't look like they were moving at all, but Alex kept an eye on their distance from the beacon, and it was moving further away.

"I know what you're all thinking," Oliver said, looking back from his console, "but we're making progress." When silence fell over the bridge, he laughed. "I'm not reading your minds, don't worry," he added. "I'd be thinking the same thing if I were in your position."

"Oliver, your nose is bleeding," Titus said, getting to his feet and moving to Oliver's station. "Maybe we should stop for tonight."

Oliver shook his head. "I'm fine," he said, wiping at the blood on his face. "I can keep going."

"Dirk, check him," Alex said. "Oliver, we've got time, you don't have to push yourself."

"He's fine," Dirk ran his scanner over Oliver, "but his brain activity is off the charts. I have no idea how much he can take. I recommend he doesn't overdo it."

"You heard him," Titus laid a hand on Oliver's shoulder. "Come on, let's take a break."

"I can do this," Oliver gritted his teeth, shrugging off Titus' hand. "Just let me work, OK? Ten more minutes."

Alex looked to Dirk, who nodded. "OK, ten minutes. But after that, you're going to go rest."

"You don't have to baby me," Oliver said, frowning.

"I'm not babying you," she told him. "But seeing as you're our only way home, I'd like to make sure that you can actually get us there before you burn out your brain."

"I'll be careful," Oliver said. "I promise."

"Yes you will," Titus said, hovering over him. "Or I'm going to get Dirk to sedate you."

"Teri, how's the distance from the beacon?" Oliver ignored Titus, focused on his work.

"We're making progress. Moving slightly slower than sub-light, but we're moving."

"Talk to us, Oliver," Alex told him. "If you can, of course. Just tell us what's going on."

"The squid showed me... No, that's wrong," he shook his head. "It's not like it explained to me how to do this. I just... knew how to do it, all of a sudden. I don't know how, but I know how it's all supposed to feel." He paused, making adjustments to their course. "There aren't any exit points from hyperspace anywhere here, so I can't just take us back out into normal space. I need to find one first."

"How will you know when you've found it?"

"I can sort of feel them, just at the edges of my awareness. I know we're heading in the right direction, but I need to navigate, otherwise we'll just get lost and end up drifting again. That's why most jump gates are connected, so the jump drives can just lock onto where they need to go, and the time spent in hyperspace is kept to a minimum."

"How long do you think it'll be before we reach one of these exit points?" Teri asked.

"I don't know," Oliver shook his head. "I'm kinda flying by the seat of my pants here. But I don't think it'll be too long."

"OK, your ten minutes are up," Dirk told him. "Titus, take him back to his room, make sure he gets some rest. And make sure he actually _rests_ ," he added with a leer.

Titus glared at Dirk, but moved to Oliver's side. "You heard him, come on."

"I need to set our position and finish up," Oliver shook his head.

"No, Oliver, go rest," Alex told him. "We can take care of all of that."

"All right," he said, and let Titus pull him out of his chair. "I'll be able to take us further tomorrow."

"You're going to take it slow," Alex told him, her voice brooking no refusal. "Now go and sleep, that's an order."

"Aye, captain," Oliver smiled.

"You guys go sleep, too," Alex told Teri, Dirk, and Ash, but Dirk shook his head.

"You need rest, too, Alex," he said. "Ash can take the night watch, it's not like there's anything to do other than just be here. You go and get some sleep." When Alex opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand. "I can make that an order, if you'd like. I'm the ship's doctor, I can do that."

"Remind me again why I thought having you on board was a good idea?" Alex grumbled as she stood and headed for the door.

#

Traveling in stops and starts was a slow way to make progress, but according to Oliver they were getting closer. Everyone settled into a routine after a few days, Oliver spending as much time on the bridge as Titus and Dirk and Alex would let him, arguing for more time at the helm every day, and getting a little more time every day. As they got closer to getting home, everyone was more inclined to let Oliver work longer, if it shortened their travel time.

Alex headed to the mess hall for dinner, and paused at the door when she heard a child laughing. Emily sat on one of the chairs by the table, swinging her feet, listening intently as Henry talked to her. She watched them for a while, marveling at how easily dealing with a small child came to Henry. When Emily spotted her and waved, Henry turned to look at her, and Alex gave them a smile.

"You're a natural at that," she told Henry as she filled her plate and sat down. "Being a dad suits you."

Henry smiled. "I don't know if I'd go that far." He pushed Emily's plate closer to her, pointing to it. "Finish your dinner, young lady." He met her eyes and stared her down until she picked up her fork again.

"Doesn't change the fact that you're good at it," Alex told him. "And she's taken a shine to you, too. I'm sure you and Cal would make good parents for her." At Henry's surprised look, she shrugged. "I heard you guys talking, I know you offered them a place to stay for a while. It's good of you to do that for them, they've got nowhere else to go."

Henry pressed his lips together. "You're staying on the ship, then?"

"I haven't decided yet," Alex shook her head. "You're taking them in, and your place isn't that big. I don't want to be in the way."

"I finished, I'm gonna go see Cal!" Emily announced, sliding off the chair she sat in and running off.

Henry sighed. "Cal's in medical, getting a checkup. I'd better go after her," he said. Still frowning, he stood up, not taking his eyes off Alex. "You're wrong, you know." He turned to walk away without explaining.

"Wrong about what?"

"You wouldn't be in the way," he told her. "Not with me." He ran after Emily, calling her name, leaving Alex alone in the mess hall. She stared down at her food, poking it with a fork, then pushed away her plate.

"Way to go, Alex," she told herself. Pushing back her chair, she stood up, and headed after Henry.

When she reached medical, she could hear Emily talking to someone, but when she came inside, she saw that Emily was speaking with Dirk.

"Is Henry around?"

"He took Cal to hydroponics," Dirk told her.

"Cal wanted to float a bit," Emily announced. "And Uncle Dirk is babysitting. But he says he doesn't know any bedtime stories to tell me!"

Alex raised an eyebrow at Dirk and he shrugged. "I'm sorry, Emily, but I really don't know any stories. Maybe the captain can help you out."

Emily's full attention was focused on Alex now, and Alex glared at Dirk. "I don't know if I know any bedtime stories," she said. "Come on, though, we'll figure something out." Emily held out her arms and Alex picked her up off the exam table where she'd been sitting. As soon as Alex had Emily in her arms, the girl wrapped her arms around Alex in a fierce hug. "I'll make you a deal," Alex told her, and Emily looked up, interested. "If I tell you a bedtime story, will you stay in your room while I go take care of something?" Emily frowned a bit and tightened her hold on Alex. "I'll only be a little bit, you won't be alone for long, I promise." Emily nodded, and Alex headed for the room where Cal and Emily were staying.

She tucked Emily into bed, and sat down on the floor beside the bed. Emily held out her hand expectantly and Alex held out her own hand, letting Emily grip it tightly. For a moment, she couldn't talk, the lump in her throat choking off her words. When Emily squeezed her fingers expectantly, Alex cleared her throat.

"Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. The boy was a brave soldier, and the girl was a spy." She grinned when Emily's eyes widened. "The girl helped her people find out information about bad people who wanted to hurt them, and the brave soldier and his people kept the planet safe. The soldier fell in love with the spy, but he didn't tell her. They were really good friends, but she didn't realize that he loved her."

"Did she love him, too?" Emily asked, and Alex smiled.

"She did, but she didn't know it yet. A very bad man took the spy away and hurt her, and the soldier rescued her. The soldier took care of the spy when she was sick, and made sure she got better. But the spy still didn't know that she loved him, and she left and became a pirate."

"Why didn't the soldier go with her?"

"He couldn't," Alex shook her head. "So he stayed behind, and waited for the pirate, hoping that one day, she would realize that he loved her, and that she'd tell him she loved him, too. And then they went on an adventure, and even though the soldier kept telling the pirate that he loved her, she still didn't tell him that she loved him too."

Emily turned to lie on her side, cuddling a pillow to her chest, not letting go of Alex's hand. "Why not?"

"Because she was silly," Alex said, he voice choked. "She didn't realize that all the times he'd taken care of her were just another way of him telling her he loved her. But eventually, she figured it out, and decided to tell him how she felt."

"And what happened then?" Emily asked, a yawn dragging out the last word into several syllables.

"I don't know," Alex said, leaning down to kiss Emily's forehead. "I haven't heard the end of the story yet, but I'll tell you as soon as I know, all right?"

"All right," Emily said, pushing back the covers and holding out her arms to Alex. "Cal always gives me a good night hug," she said, and Alex laughed.

"Far be it from me to break with tradition," she said, and held out her hands. Emily scooted out from under the covers and launched herself at Alex.

Once the hug was over, Alex tucked Emily in under the covers, kissing her forehead again. "Goodnight, Emily," she said.

"Good night," Emily said, closing her eyes. Alex was almost out of the room when Emily called out to her again. "Alex, are you going to be my mommy?"

"I don't know, honey," Alex said, and fled before Emily could ask any more questions she had no idea how to answer.

She headed for hydroponics, stopping along the way to tell herself that she was absolutely not going to rehearse how to tell Henry that yes, she loved him, and yes, she wanted to be with him, and would be please forgive her for being so stupid as to not notice what he'd been telling her all these years.

When the door to hydroponics opened, Alex leaned in, wanting to keep the security of solid floor under her feet.

"Henry, I—" she looked up and broke off. Henry and Cal were floating over the flowerbeds, arms wrapped around each other, sharing a kiss that looked like it had been going on for a while.

Alex stood frozen in place, unable to speak or tear her eyes away from what she was seeing. Finally, when Henry broke the kiss and turned to look at her, she was able to force her feet to move. Without thinking, she closed the door and took off down the corridor, not caring where she was going, as long as it took her away from Henry. Behind her, she could hear Henry calling her name and running after her, but she didn't stop.

Henry finally caught up to her, grabbing her arm and forcefully turning her to face him.

"Alex, stop." He looked down at where he was holding her arm and let go, pulling his hand back like he'd been burned. "Please, talk to me."

"What's there to talk about? I'm pretty sure what I saw said everything there was to be said. I'm sorry I bothered you." She turned to walk away, and Henry reached out for her again, this time grabbing her hand.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Talking like none of it is affecting you. Stop pretending."

"I don't have the luxury, Henry," Alex said. "I have a ship to captain, a crew to take care of, and I can't afford to let my emotions distract me."

"Is that what I am to you, a distraction?"

Alex pulled her hand out of Henry's grasp. "You seem to be coping pretty well, as I recall. I can't say I blame you for moving on, after the way I've been treating you. You've always been there for me, you've taken care of me and cleaned me up afterwards, and all I've given you is the occasional roll in the hay and no clear answers."

"I'm not moving on," Henry said, advancing on her until her back was against the wall. "Look, maybe I've got some feelings for Cal, maybe I'm even falling in love with him, but in case you haven't noticed, I've _always_ been in love with you, and that's not stopping. I'm not so stupid as to pine away for you forever at the cost of my own happiness," he paused, looking unhappy with his words. "For the most part, I'm okay with whatever it is we have, because I'd rather have that than not have you in my life at all. If you never feel the same way, that's okay, but at least you know where you stand."

Alex kissed him, then, hands tangling in his hair, her tongue pushing into his mouth, her teeth nipping at his lips, until his hands tangled in her hair. Just when it seemed like she wouldn't be able to breathe anymore, Henry tugged at her hair, and she pulled back, licking her lips and feeling them swollen from the kiss.

"I love you too," she said, leaning forward and resting her forehead against his. "I'm sorry it took me so long to say it."

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Cal spoke up from where he was standing a few feet away from them.

Alex tried to pull back from Henry, but her back was already up against the wall and there was nowhere for her to go. She stared at Cal, not sure what to say. What exactly did one say to someone who'd just been kissing one's... What exactly was Henry to her, other than some sort of undefined friend with benefits? She didn't have a claim on him, nothing she could point to and say "see? he's mine, stay away from him!" Sighing, she pushed away from the wall.

"I think we're just about done," she said, not looking at Henry. "I need to get back to the bridge, please excuse me." She tried to walk past Cal, but he maneuvered her against the wall, crowding her. "What—?"

Cal's lips on hers were surprising. He tasted like spices, familiar and exotic at the same time, and she kissed him back, suddenly unable to focus on anything but him. He licked into her mouth, stealing her air until she felt like she would suffocate. His hands slid over her ribs and onto her hips, pulling her against him. She could feel how hard he was, hips grinding against hers, and when he pushed a thigh between her legs, she let him, raising her hands to tangle in his hair.

Alex had no idea how long the kiss went on before Henry cleared his throat, and she looked up, trying to catch her breath. He stood a couple of feet away from her and Cal, eyebrow raised as he watched them.

"I had no intention of getting in between you two," Cal said, stepping back from her, his hair mussed from where Alex had run her hands through it. "I can tell there is a strong bond between you. And I believe I can help you."

"Help us? What are you talking about?"

"Your doctor hasn't told you, then," Cal looked thoughtful, and he ran his hand over his hair, smoothing it down. "I'm not human," he said after a pause. "Some of my people, the Ephere, have a certain ability. We can see into people's hearts, into their bodies. That's how I knew there was something between you. That's how I know you're ill," he said to Alex. "You're getting help for it, but there's a lot of work ahead of you. And you," he turned to Henry, reaching for Henry's head. "There's something not quite right in here," he ran his hand over the back of Henry's head.

"What's your point?" Alex snapped.

"I can help," Cal said, smiling at her. "I can make you better."

"So, what, you just lay your hands on us and heal us?"

"Something like that," Cal smiled again. "I'll leave you two to decide what you want to do. You know where to find me." With that, he left feather-light kisses on both their cheeks and left them in the corridor.

"What the hell was that about?" Alex turned to Henry.

"You've got as much of an idea as I do," Henry shrugged. "But I'm going to see if there's anything on the Ephere in the computer, even if it's just to satisfy my curiosity."

"Alex, Oliver's ready to start again," Teri said over the comms.

"I'll be right there," Alex told her, then looked to Henry. "I need to be on the bridge for this, so I'll see you later. Save some reading material for me, will you?"

#

"Before I take us out of hyperspace," Oliver turned to Alex, "I want to ask you not to turn the data core over to the client. Just tell him the ship was too damaged and we couldn't retrieve it."

"And what am I supposed to tell him?"

"I don't know," Oliver pleaded with Alex. "We didn't find the ship, it was too damaged, it exploded before we got to the core, anything. He went to her, taking her hands. "Alex, all the data about the experiments is on that core. We can't let Carrow get his hands on it. What if he wants to start the whole thing up again?"

"He's missing one crucial ingredient," Ash pointed out. "He doesn't have any squids."

"In case you've failed to notice, this ship is currently covered in them," Alex reminded him. "And besides, who's to say he doesn't have one somewhere? If this one survived for this long, maybe he's got another old one, too."

"What if he asks for his money back when we show up empty-handed? I'll gladly give my share back, but what about everyone else?"

"I'll pay mine back," Titus raised his hand. Dirk and Ash and Teri followed.

"All right. I think I can safely say Henry will do the same," Alex said. "Ash, can you see if you can wipe the core, or damage it in some way that will make the data irretrievable? I'd feel better if we had something to show him, even if it's a charred box."

Ash nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

"How long do you need?"

"I don't know, a few hours maybe? I need to figure out how to wipe the data permanently."

"Oliver, how long will it take you to get us back to normal space?"

"By the time Ash is done, I'll have us back safely," Oliver told her. "I'm trying to find us a spot near the Outer Systems, where we won't draw too much attention to ourselves if we just come out of hyperspace without a gate. I could try to find a gate, but it might take a while."

"We don't want anyone to find out you can navigate in and out of hyperspace with your brain," Titus said. "I say you do whatever you need to do to be discreet."

"Take it nice and slow, Oliver," Alex told him. "We've made it this long, we can manage a little longer."

"Thank you, Alex," Oliver said. "I appreciate you taking a risk like that for me."

"I'm not doing it for you," Alex shook her head. "Nobody should have access to that information, not for all the money in the universe." She turned to grab Ash's arm as he walked past her heading for engineering. "Ash, before you destroy the core, make a copy of all the data on it."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Ash asked, looking around the bridge. "What if someone finds out we've got it?"

"We can always destroy it later," Teri said. "I know it's a risk, and obviously how they got it is horrible, but what if there's something in there that could help people?"

"Teri's right," Oliver said. "I'm willing to take the risk of people finding out about the experiments if there's a possibility something on that core could be useful."

"People are going to want to know where it came from," Ash said. "And then the whole charade falls apart, and Carrow finds out we lied."

"I'll take the responsibility for that," Alex said. "Make a copy of the data, then destroy the core. That's an order, if it helps."

Ash shook his head. "It doesn't, but I get your point. I'll let you know when it's done."

"Oliver, get some rest while Ash works," Alex told him, catching him yawning out of the corner of her eye. "That goes for the rest of you as well."

Dirk leaned down over Alex's chair, peering down at her. "You need to get some rest, too," he said.

"I don't need to get rest, Dirk," Alex shook her head. "I've had enough rest."

"All right, but I need you to come down to medical before we get home. I want to have current results for when we get back and I get those nanites."

"Will do," Alex waved her fingers near her temple. "Now get out of here, I've got stuff to do."

"Don't work too hard!" Teri called out to Alex, dragging Dirk away. "Call us if you need anything."

Once she was alone on the bridge, Alex pulled up information on the Ephere and started reading. Although relatively undocumented, there were several cases in which people reported witnessing the Ephere's healing abilities, whether first hand or as observers. One woman's husband had had a festering leg wound healed, another woman was cured of a dangerous Teian-Eifar infection, normally deadly to those infected. Still another person had regained the ability to walk, and a young couple's child had had her sight restored. All the people spoke warmly about the Ephere and particularly those individuals who were their benefactors. Doctors who'd examined the healed had no explanations for how the healing had happened, but confirmed that they had, indeed, been cured of all ailments. Alex read through several reports, looking for a mention of the specific requirements Cal had mentioned, but could find nothing like it in the text.

When the door opened behind her, Alex knew without looking it was Henry. He laid a hand on her back, and she leaned into the touch, feeling a little bit of the tension draining out of her.

"What do you think?"

"Emily asked me if I was going to be her mom the other day," Alex said.

"What did you tell her?"

"I said I didn't know," Alex said. "I gave up on the idea of having kids when I found out I couldn't get the sterilization reversed. I don't know if I'd know what to do with a kid if I ever found myself with one."

"I think you'd do great," Henry told her. "You may not realize it, but I've seen the way you look at Emily."

"Are maybes and what ifs worth the risk?"

"I think anything that has a chance of helping you is worth trying," Henry said, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "And I have to say, not having to worry about my head exploding would be nice."

"It'd get you off Eurydice, too," Alex said. "You could come with me more often. If I decided to stay on the ship," she added.

"Why don't we talk to him, then?" Henry suggested. "It can't hurt to talk."

#

Henry was in the mess hall, finishing his cup of coffee, when Alex stumbled in, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She poured herself a cup and sat down beside him, setting the cup on the table and resting her head on his shoulder.

"Did you get a visit from Cal last night?" She asked, yawning.

Henry nodded. "I woke up with him sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me sleep."

"Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all," Alex sat up and reached for her coffee. "Do you feel any different?"

Henry shook his head. "I wasn't expecting to feel any different, to be honest." He scratched his head and ran his fingers over the scars under his hair. "The scars are still here," he said. "What about you?"

"I'm still wondering if it was worth waking up to having him be all creepy at me in the middle of the night. I don't know what I was expecting, but having him crawl into bed with me and curl around me wasn't it." Alex yawned again, and rested her head on her forearms. "Is that what he did with you?"

Henry made a vague affirmative noise. He glanced over at Alex, and reached over to brush her hair off her neck. He ran his fingers over the fading bruise on her neck, and Alex shivered under his touch.

"I don't remember this," he said, and felt Alex's skin warm under his touch as she blushed.

"What, you remember every mark you leave on me?" Her voice was muffled by her arms, but there was no mistaking the tone of avoidance in it.

Henry leaned in until his lips brushed Alex's cheek and breathed in. Her smell was familiar, warm and sweet, and when he closed his eyes, he could imagine how her skin would taste. There was a hint of another smell on her skin, and all lingering questions in Henry's mind were suddenly answered.

"Cuddling's not all you did last night, is it?" Henry wrapped his hand around Alex's neck and pulled her up, chuckling at the bright red blush that colored her cheeks. "He came to see me after he left you," he whispered, following his words with a kiss to the bend of her jaw. Alex's breath hitched and her hands tightened around her cup as she tilted her head to give Henry better access.

"Come on, you two, knock it off," Teri groaned as she came into the room. "Alex, you made the rule yourself, no funny stuff in the mess hall."

"We're just talking," Alex said, trying unsuccessfully to hide her face against Henry's shoulder. "And you're hardly one to be bringing up that rule, Miss I-Totally-Wasn't-Having-Sex-With-My-Boyfriend-In-Engineering."

Teri glared at Alex, then sat down at the far end of the table, drinking coffee.

"Ash finished with the data core last night. We now have a useless piece of charred metal to hand over to Carrow. And Oliver's going to take us back to normal space today."

"I'll be up on the bridge in a bit," Alex said, sitting up. Henry could see that her blush had finally faded—work seemed to be something Alex could focus on without trouble. "I have something I need to do first." She grabbed Henry's hand and pulled him out of his seat, dragging him with her.

"Where are we going?"

"To see Cal," Alex said. "I want to know exactly what he did to us. And what the hell he was doing, crawling into bed with us. I don't think any of the others the Ephere healed went through the same thing. I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned it."

"Maybe he just likes us," Henry suggested, grinning at Alex's expression when she turned to face him. "We've already established how I feel about him, and you certainly didn't have any problems kissing him the other day."

"There's a difference between kissing and what he and I—" She trailed off, hand going to the back of her neck to rub at the bite mark there. When she realized what she was doing, she stuck her hand in her pocket, glaring at Henry when he laughed. "Shut up," she told him.

Henry caught her hand and pulled her close. "This doesn't change anything between us, you know that, right?"

Alex shook her head, biting her lip. "You're falling for him. I don't want to lose you."

"You're not going to lose me," Henry told her. "I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Alex said. "Please, don't do that."

"All right," Henry kissed her forehead. "I'll try not to make any more promises."

"I know I'm being selfish," Alex said, leaning into Henry. "I know I have no right to ask you not to choose him over me."

"Perhaps nobody has to choose any one single person," Cal said, coming around the corner. "I seem to be the subject of the conversation, so I thought perhaps this would not be an unwelcome interruption."

"Of course," Henry said, giving Cal a smile, but not letting go of Alex.

"There is a tradition among my people," Cal said, then shook his head. "Well, there _was_ a tradition among my people. It's been a while since I've been home, it could have changed by now." He cleared his throat, shaking his head again. "Forgive me, this is not something I have ever done before."

"Done what?" Alex asked, turning in Henry's arms so that she faced Cal, but staying within the circle of Henry's arms.

"The tradition was maintained mostly among those of my people who have the ability to heal others. Sometimes, when the healing was of a more intense nature, and perhaps accompanied by strong feelings, the healer chose more than one person to be connected to." He stepped closer to Henry and Alex, and reached for their hands. "In a case such as ours, perhaps such an arrangement would be beneficial to all involved?"

"Are you suggesting the three of us...?" Alex looked from Cal to Henry and back to Cal again.

"I've observed the relationships on your ship," Cal told her. "Is it so far-fetched to consider such a relationship for yourself?"

"Perhaps we could move this conversation to more private surroundings," Henry suggested, giving Alex a respite she thanked him for with an eloquent glance.

"Of course," Cal nodded.

"This way," Alex snapped out of her thoughts and led the way toward the living quarters. There wasn't much difference between any of the three rooms they had to choose from, with the exception of the possible presence of Emily in Cal's room.

Henry was about to suggest his own rooms when Alex turned toward his door anyway. She turned to him and gave him an apologetic shrug. "Your room's less messy than mine," she said.

Henry opened the door and stepped aside to let Cal and Alex inside, then followed them in. Once the door was closed and locked, an awkward silence descended over the room.

"These conversations are always a lot more dramatic on Dirk and Ash's space soaps," Alex said with a nervous chuckle. "I don't know if I should be relieved or suspicious that this is different."

At Cal's confused glance between the two of them, Henry laughed. "I'll show you someday. I think you'll like it."

"All right," Cal nodded, still looking confused.

"As to your earlier question," Alex said, stepping forward. "I've never considered a relationship like Teri and Dirk and Ash have, because I've never found two people I'd want to be with at the same time before."

"And now?" Henry asked, stepping closer to her.

"It seems to me that I'm the one on whose decision this whole arrangement is depending," Alex said. "What if it doesn't work out?" She turned to Cal.

"I don't know why it wouldn't," he said, looking from Alex to Henry, "but if anyone ever wants out, there's nothing stopping them."

"You've only just met us," Alex said, sitting down on Henry's bed. "How can you know that you want to be with us?"

"I always thought I'd just know," Cal shrugged. "When I'm with you, or with Henry, it just feels right. I think it's only fair we at least see if it feels just as right when the three of us are together."

"What do you think, Henry?" Alex turned to him.

"I've loved you for a long time," Henry said to Alex. "And I don't see anything changing that." He turned to Cal, clearing his throat. "If we can make this work, I say we give it a try."

Cal beamed at them both, and closed the distance between himself and Henry, wrapping a hand around the back of Henry's neck.

"I think this calls for a celebration," he said, pulling Henry down into a kiss. As the kiss grew more heated, Henry heard a faint gasp from Alex. When he pulled away from Cal and turned to look at Alex, he saw her staring at them, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, her breaths coming fast and shallow.

Cal followed Henry's example in turning to Alex, and wasted no time going to her and crawling into her lap. When Cal fingers found the bite mark on Alex's neck, Henry saw her eyes widen even more, and her mouth fall open as she took a deep shuddering breath. Cal leaned in and kissed her then, pushing her back until she fell back onto the bed. Turning back to Henry, Cal held out a hand, and Henry found himself moving forward to take it before he realized what he was doing.

#

"I see you took my advice about not working too hard to heart," Teri leered when Alex came onto the bridge. "Then again, maybe you didn't," she added, looking Alex over head to toe. "What _have_ you been doing?"

"Out of the chair," Alex said, hoping that she wasn't blushing too much, or that Teri wouldn't notice. "Where are we at, Oliver?"

"I've gotten us as close as I can. It's one of the more remote gates, near Tigeros System. Hopefully no one's watching too closely, and they won't notice that we're not actually coming out of a gate." He looked apologetic. "I'm not sure I can handle a gate, sorry."

"It's OK," Alex told him. "I know that system, and they don't monitor the gate traffic. It's only there so they can get supply drops for the colony outposts more easily."

"Oh, hey, what's going on?" Teri pointed to the screen, where the baby squids were floating around the ship, no longer attached to it. "Are they leaving?"

"Yeah," Oliver nodded. "I told them it's probably better if they stay in hyperspace, away from gates and well-traveled routes." He went quiet, watching the squids floating away from the _Nemesis_. "I wish I didn't have to tell them to stay away from people."

"Maybe things will change eventually," Alex told him. She stared at the sparkling trails of color left behind by the squid. "That is _so_ pretty," she sighed. "You think we'll ever see them again?"

"They know that this ship is safe," Oliver nodded, not taking his eyes off the screen. "If they see us in hyperspace, they won't hide."

"Better tell them to be careful, even if they see the _Nemesis_ ," Alex said, hating what she had to say next. "We can't guarantee that it'll be us on board. Could be someone who means them harm."

Oliver closed his eyes and the squids swirled around the ship once more, then faded into the swirling background of hyperspace.

"Where did they go?"

"They can camouflage themselves," Oliver grinned. "That way if they get caught by surprise, they can just hide and run, or wait until the danger's passed." One of the squids reappeared, and floated closer to the ship, spinning around, leaving behind a trail of sparkles. "They say thank you, and goodbye." The squid disappeared again, and Oliver squared his shoulders.

"All right then. Everyone hang on." He reached for the controls and closed his eyes. "In case we blow up, I just want everyone to know I'm _really_ sorry." Before anyone could answer, the swirl of hyperspace in front of them stopped, slowly peeling back on itself. When they looked through the opening, they could see the blackness of normal space, stars faintly twinkling in the distance.

Once they were past the swirl of hyperspace and looking at stars, Oliver slumped forward in his chair. Titus was at his side before anyone else had a chance to move, pulling Oliver out of his chair and lowering him to the floor. When Alex knelt beside them, she saw that Oliver's nose was bleeding again. Titus patted Oliver's cheek gently and Oliver stirred, blinking up at Titus and Alex.

"What happened?"

"You did it," Alex told him, brushing his hair off his forehead. "You got us home."

"Oh, good," he said, slumping back against Titus. "Would anyone mind terribly if I went and slept for a couple of weeks?"

"Not at all," Alex laughed. "I think we can get ourselves to Eurydice." She looked up to Titus. "Get him to medical, have Dirk check him out, then take him to his room and make sure he actually sleeps."

Titus nodded, then turned to Oliver. "Come on, let's get you out of here."

Oliver offered no resistance when Titus pulled him to his feet, and leaned on Titus for support. Alex watched them go, then turned to her console and plotted a course for Eurydice Station. It would take them a few days to get there traveling at sub-light speeds, but since they couldn't use jump gates because of Henry, and they couldn't have Oliver jump them himself, they had no other choice. The longer journey would give them some time to figure out what they were going to do about Cal and Emily. Alex doubted their presence on the _Nemesis_ was something Carrow should find out about, which meant they had to get them squared away before meeting with Carrow to hand over the "damaged" data core.

"Captain, can I assume that now that we're on our way home, you'll be coming by to see me in medical?" Dirk called her on comms.

"Yes, Dirk, I'll be coming by to see you," Alex told him. "As soon as I'm done with all the little unimportant things, like getting us on our way home and making sure the ship is still working."

"You should be making sure your _body_ is still working," Dirk told her. "I'm just trying to help you do that."

"I'll come by and see you in a bit, OK? Now let me work."

"I'll be waiting," Dirk sighed and turned his comms off.

"You know I'm not going to let you put it off, right?" Teri asked from her station. "If you don't go down there, he's just going to harass me to make you."

"I know," Alex nodded. "I'm almost done, stop nagging."

Teri huffed. "I'm not nagging."

"Yes, you are. And I appreciate it." Alex gave Teri a smile. "You can handle things here, right?"

"Yes, go," Teri waved her toward the door. "Before he starts bugging me."

"You love it, and you know it," Alex grinned, getting up. "You know where to find me if anything comes up."

She headed down to medical, getting curious about what exactly Dirk's scans would show. When she came into medical, Dirk looked up from his reading, clearly surprised to see her there.

"You're here!" He put down what he was working with and got to his feet. "I wasn't expecting you to actually come in."

"I figured better do it now and get it over with, than have you complain that I wasn't listening," Alex smiled, hopping up on the exam table. "Let's get to it, medicine man. I've got stuff to do."

Dirk got to work, setting the scanner up and running his tests. Alex lay silent through the whole thing, watching Dirk frown and rerun his tests. Finally, he stowed the scanner and glared at her.

"All right, what did you do?"

"What do you mean, what did I do?"

"I mean you fucked with my equipment, clearly," he threw up his hands in frustration. "Why else would the scans be showing that you're completely healthy, with no signs of the previous damage?"

"I didn't touch your equipment, Dirk," Alex told him, sitting up. "But now I know Cal was telling the truth."

"Truth about what?"

"He's one of the Ephere, and some of them have the ability to heal others. I read about it after he told us, but I wasn't sure I actually believed him."

"Us? You and Henry?"

"Yeah. I'd like you to run a scan on Henry, too, when he comes in. I want to know if he's better, too."

"I'll call him later," Dirk said. "So how exactly does the healing thing work? Laying on of hands? Or something more involved?"

Alex hesitated, just long enough for Dirk to seize on her silence. "Come on, Alex, share."

"I'm not giving you more fuel for your perverted brain," Alex grumbled.

"Just the fact that you think it'd be fuel for my perverted brain is proof I'm right," Dirk leered. He stepped back, looking her over. "Whatever it is you've been doing, it looks good on you. I don't suppose Cal would give me a demonstration of his skills?"

Alex didn't bother to dignify Dirks' question with an answer, and merely hopped off the table, heading for the exit. She couldn't help but grin when Dirk called after her.

"Come on, Alex! For science!"

#

"I have to admit, Captain Porter, the thought had crossed my mind that you and your crew would simply take the money and run," Carrow said, motioning Alex into the room.

Alex sat down across the table from him. "We didn't make our reputation by stealing from our clients, Sir Logan."

"I guess you've proven me wrong, then," he smiled thinly, looking at the box Alex had set on the floor by her seat. "I take it you located the ship?"

"We did, yes," Alex nodded. "The materials you provided were most helpful."

"And the data core?"

Alex nodded. "Right to business, then," she said, reaching for the box. "I'm afraid the core was damaged when we found it," she set the box on the table. "We tried to access the data while we were still on the _Pathos Verdes_ ," Carrow frowned at her words. "Unfortunately, we didn't get anywhere. Perhaps your people will be more successful." Carrow's frown smoothed out and he pulled the box to him.

"What about the _Pathos Verdes_? I assume you've logged its location?"

"We did, but I'm afraid it's not going to be any good to you."

"Captain Porter, I think you'll find you are wrong on that account," Carrow bristled.

"I'm sure I would be, if the ship were still in existence," Alex continued. "Shortly after we left the ship, it was destroyed. Not our doing, of course," she added. "I believe there was some sort of automated system in place that took the ship into hyperspace shortly after we arrived on board. The stress of the jump took its toll and the ship's structural integrity began to degrade shortly after."

"How did you manage to get back to normal space?" Carrow leaned forward, interested. "Your ship doesn't have a jump drive."

"We were lucky enough to find a gate, and even luckier to find one that let into the Tigeros System." Alex sat up, taking a deep breath. "Look, Sir Logan, I'll understand if you do not consider our agreement fulfilled. I wish we had more to bring to you," she opened the box and turned it so Carrow could see its contents. "In light of this, and in the interest of good business, we are prepared to refund your advance payment in its entirety."

"Nonsense, Captain Porter," Carrow reached for the box and took out the charred and twisted remains of the data core. "I didn't hire you on the condition that you retrieve the core intact, merely that you retrieve it. I will hand this over to my people, perhaps they will have more luck accessing the data. As a matter of fact," he reached for a dataflex and entered a command on it, then presented it to Alex, "I consider our arrangement completely fulfilled."

Alex stared at the dataflex which told her that Carrow had just transferred the rest of the payment to her. She looked up at him, shocked.

"Sir Logan, this is—"

"Please, Captain Porter," Carrow held up a hand. "You and your crew went to considerable trouble to find a ghost ship for me, and not only did you find it, but you also brought back what I asked for. In the process, you put yourself and your crew in danger, and it's only fair that you be paid for all your trouble."

Alex nodded and took the dataflex, sliding it into a pocket. "Thank you, Sir Logan."

"It probably goes without saying that all details of our arrangement are confidential," Carrow said, sitting back in his chair, "but I'll say it anyway. I would hate to see any details become public without my express approval."

"Sir Logan, I believe you know my reputation well enough to know that's not going to happen," Alex stood up. "If we're finished...?"

"Yes, of course," Carrow nodded magnanimously. "My thanks to you and your crew again, Captain Porter. And regards to Mister Priest. Please let him know that there is a payment already in his account, in compensation for arranging my meeting with you."

Clearly dismissed, Alex left Carrow's ship, and headed back to the _Nemesis_. When she was back aboard, she divided the second payment between everyone's accounts, then called everyone for a meeting. The ship seemed empty, but Alex could hear Emily laughing somewhere ahead, and headed that way.

She found Henry and Emily in the mess hall, Henry lying on his back, lifting Emily up on his feet. She shrieked and laughed as he lifted her up, stretching out her arms and legs as far as she could. When she saw Alex come in, she flapped her hands, demanding to be let down, and as soon as her feet were on the floor, took off running towards Alex at full speed.

"Alex! Did you see? I was flying!" Emily held out her arms to Alex, demanding to be picked up, and Alex obliged her. Emily wrapped her arms around Alex, clinging to her tightly.

"I saw," Alex grinned, shifting Emily's arm off her neck so she could breathe. "I'll take you to hydroponics one day, and you can really fly."

Emily's excited shriek made Alex wince, especially since she got the full volume of it in one ear.

"Actually, Henry, could you find Cal and have him take her? I need to talk to the crew."

"I can take her myself," Henry said. "I think Cal's sleeping again." He grinned. "He's been complaining about needing sleep for the last week."

"I don't need to sleep!" Emily announced, wriggling in Alex's arms. "I wanna go flying!" Alex set her down and Emily ran to Henry, reaching out for his hand. "Come on, Henry, let's go flying!"

"You should really be there, too," Alex told him. "You're part of the crew now, you have a say in the decision making."

Henry gave her a kiss and shook his head. "You can fill me in later. Come on," he said to Emily. "Let's go flying."

Alex stared after them long enough that she didn't hear Teri coming up behind her.

"You've got it bad, don't you?" Teri wrapped an arm around Alex's shoulders.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alex said, but didn't stop looking down the corridor.

"Sure, you don't," Teri laughed. "Here come the boys," she said, looking over her shoulder. "What's the meeting about?"

"Carrow paid the full amount," Alex said, turning to face Dirk and Ash, who were just coming in, Titus and Oliver behind them. "The money's already in your accounts."

"I'm giving serious thought to retiring," Dirk announced, flopping into a chair. "I'm gonna get myself a farm, grow vanas plants and raise unicorn ponies."

"I can't really see you as a farmer," Titus told him.

"That's why I'd take Teri and Ash with me," Dirk said. "What do you think, guys?"

"I think we should let Alex say what she called us here to say," Teri told him, patting his cheek when he pouted. "Besides, I'm not ready to settle down and be a farmer's wife yet."

"You don't have to be a farmer's wife," Dirk said, pulling her into his lap. "You could be a farmer's very smart and sexy girlfriend."

"Guys, can we focus, please?" Alex stood up in the middle of the room. "Look, Carrow paid us a lot of money, more than we've made in the last little while. If you guys want to retire, or get your own ship and do whatever, you can afford it now. I get the feeling that he's not quite buying the story about the core being damaged when we found it." She sighed. "I won't blame you if you want to leave and work somewhere that doesn't have a potential bull's-eye painted on it."

As Alex looked from person to person, they all stared back silently. Finally, Teri slid off Dirk's lap and stood up. "I'm not going anywhere for the moment," she said. "And I'm pretty sure Dirk and Ash will stay, too. Right, guys?" They both nodded, and Teri turned to Titus and Oliver. "What about you guys?"

"I need to decide if I'm going to help Grimaldi," Oliver said. "And given everything that's happened in the last few days, I think I have to."

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," Titus told him, and Oliver shushed him.

"I know that, but I have a responsibility to let him know what I've found out."

"Why don't we take you to him, then?" Alex said, and Oliver looked up to her, surprised. "It's not like we can't afford to take the time off," she shrugged.

"I can't ask you guys to go into this with me," Oliver shook his head. "We don't know what's going to happen."

"And that's exactly why you need us with you," Teri told him. "You're one of us, we're not going to let you walk into an unknown situation by yourself."

"He's not going in by himself," Titus protested, but his tone didn't carry much conviction.

"Does everyone agree, then? We're going to take Oliver to his meeting with the ambassador?" Alex got to her feet, looking around the room. One by one, everyone nodded, and Oliver ducked his head, an embarrassed smile on his lips.

"Thank you," he said, quietly. "I really appreciate this."

"Like Teri said, you're one of us," Alex said. "We're here for you. Teri, make sure that the food and water supplies are replenished, get what you need for the gardens. Ash, Titus, why don't you two see to the engines and the fuel. Dirk, pick up whatever you need for medical. Oliver, find out where the ambassador would like to meet and plot us a route. I'll go talk to Henry and Cal."

"Are you going to bring them along?" Titus asked.

"Are we going to have a problem if I do?" Alex tried not to glare, but she was pretty sure she was unsuccessful.

"No," Titus shook his head. "I'm good."

"Good," Alex nodded.

"All right, everyone, you heard the captain," Teri told them, getting to her feet. "Let's get to work." She stopped beside Alex, watching everyone leave. "Are you really going to let Henry and Cal stay on board?"

"Yeah," Alex said. "Why?"

"I'm just thinking we might have to childproof the ship if they stay. It's not like you're going to leave Emily behind."

"We're just taking Oliver to his meeting," Alex said. "It'll be safe enough for her here."

"I suppose we've had stranger passengers on board," Teri shrugged. "I'm going to get the supplies, and you go talk to your family." She gave Alex's shoulder a squeeze and headed out.

Alex turned to the other door and practically walked into Henry and Cal, swinging Emily between them.

"So where are we going?" Cal asked, setting Emily down and walking up to Alex to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"You guys heard that?"

"We were in the hallway, listening," Cal pretended to look remorseful, failing utterly.

Alex laughed. "Are you guys OK with this plan?"

Henry nodded. "We'd like to come along, if you'll have us. Emily really wants to go, too, don't you?" He looked down to Emily, and she nodded vigorously, her hair flying all over the place.

"I guess that's settled, then," Alex said, holding out a hand to Emily. Together with Henry, they swung her between them.

"Can we remodel some of the living quarters?" Cal asked. "They're all too small for the three of us."

"I'm sure we can figure something out," Alex laughed again. It was nice to be able to laugh again, without having to fake it. Emily tugged at her hand and Alex knelt down beside her.

"You're not going to leave me behind, are you?" Emily asked, her face very serious.

"Of course not," Alex squeezed her had. "Why would you even think we'd do that?"

"They left me behind once," Emily said, her lip trembling. "I didn't get to go on the adventure."

"From now on, you'll get to go on all the adventures," Alex told her, pulling her into a hug. "No one's leaving you behind." Still holding onto Emily's hand, she stood up. "Come on, I'll show you around the ship. And when we head out, you can come up on the bridge with me if you want."

"Can I sit in your chair, too?" Emily's eyes were wide with excitement.

"You can sit in my chair, too."

"Careful, she'll want to be in charge of the whole thing next," Henry said, but he was smiling as well.

"I think we might have to wait a few years for that, but I'm sure we can arrange something."

"Hear that, Emily? You wanna learn to be a ship's captain?"

"I'm gonna be Cap'n Emily!" She pulled away from Alex and skipped around the room, waving her hands in the air, chanting her new title over and over again.

"She's going to be a handful," Alex told Henry and Cal as they watched Emily move around the room. "We're gonna have to childproof this place."

"Don't worry," Henry told her, stepping closer and wrapping an arm around her. "Cal and I will take care of it."

"I don't know how much use that will be," Cal said. "She's probably smarter than all of us combined."

"Three of us against one of her, do you think we have even a chance?"

"We're about to find out," Alex said, leaning into Henry's arms. "One way or another, I'm glad you guys are coming with me. Right now, though," she pulled away from Henry, "I've got to go relieve Cap'n Emily and get back to work. If there's anything you need from home," she turned back to Henry, "now would be a good time to get it."

Henry nodded. "Go, work. Cal and I will take care of everything here." He herded her into the hallway and made shooing motions at her when she looked back before heading toward the bridge.

Until now, she'd considered her crew to be her only family. But families changed, and so did her crew. Dirk was considering leaving, and Alex had no doubt that if he left, Teri and Ash would go with him. With Oliver and Titus going to Casadia Archele, possibly to stay there, the crew would change even more. As much as she would miss everyone, having her new family with her would give her an opportunity for a new adventure. After all, wasn't that what she'd promised Emily?

_to be continued..._


End file.
